


Mountain Dew

by dutchbuffy



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Global Warming, Kid Fic, Mountaineering, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 07:20:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11286408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchbuffy/pseuds/dutchbuffy
Summary: Post-NFA, very post, Spike and Buffy find themselves in an out-of-the-way spot to avert the latest apocalypse. There's been water under the bridge, and the bridge not often crossed...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story ends at chapter 8 — a fine place to end — although there are some plot threads left dangling. There is no plan at present to write more, however. Call it a permanent WIP if you must.

Buffy takes off her fleece-lined cap, loosens her scarf and turns her face into the sun. It isn't sensible at this height, even with the thick white sun block she's put on and which makes her look so charmingly white-faced and greasy, but right now, when the sun finally clears the Black Mountains across the valley, is the best moment of her day. The fierce rays thaw her aching bones and stiff cheeks, just for a quarter of an hour.

Her posture, hunched over the hot, so-called tea in her mittens, slowly loosens. Jesus, the nights get cold. And they are long, even in Midsummer, because the mountain peaks possessively block out most of the sky. Buffy walks up and down bit, grimacing as she forces herself to drink the hot suje, the salty tea of Bhutan. Brrrr. But she has to drink. At first, the Sherpas kept forcing tea on her, and when she refused to drink the disgusting stuff, boiled water. She's grudgingly given in, because hey, Sherpa. They know their jobs, and even a Slayer body has to adjust to a height of 12,000 feet. Vampires don't.

She yawns. Time for bed. She crawls into her tent, but before she closes the flap she casts a glance over at the wooden hut in the lee of the rocky outcrop. Its occupant is long asleep. The Sherpas watch over them both by day, but now they're putting butter in their tea and making flatbread and soup in the hot morning sun. Every evening she wakes up hoping that their superstitious fear has stayed put and that nobody has gotten it in his tiny brain to torch the cabin. She hopes they know their lives depend on the presence of two champions at Midsummer.

#

Buffy doesn't sleep well. The thin air gives her endless dreams of drowning, choking, being buried alive. She breaks her nails on coffin lining, the Master pushes her face down in shallow water, Angelus chokes her on a bed of red roses. In the evening, when she wakes up with her tent red-tinged by the setting sun, she has a hard time remembering which things really happened and which ones didn't.

#

The days are long and there is nothing to do. No TV or internet, duh, but also no walks to take, no magazines to read, nothing. The Sherpas told her to take it easy the first week, and Buffy laughed at that, because hey, a Slayer, she can do anything. But she's been short of breath, dizzy, queasy, cranky and headachy for a week. She sleeps, day and night, or dozes, and is bored like a boredy thing from hell for ten days straight. The first morning she wakes up with a clear head is like being reborn. The sky is grey, tinged with lilac, the air's so cold her breath steams, and she crawls from her tent in her stinky sweats and does nothing but breathe for minutes on end. There is a smell in the air really isn't a smell;, it is the purity of emptiness, of being the first living being to breathe it in. The groaning glacier far beneath the camp curls around the mountain's haunches, striped like a much-used runway. Maybe flying demons land there.

She turns her head and finds Spike's eyes on her. Dawn hasn't quite arrived yet, so he can stand outside with impunity, but in minutes he will have to withdraw to his wooden cabin, hastily but painstakingly lined with aluminum blankets to keep every last sliver of sun out. Spike doesn't have mountain sickness, but his movements are even more circumscribed than hers on this cramped mountain ledge, a hundred yards wide, two hundred deep. They were schlepped up here by the Sherpas, trussed up like rolled chicken roasts, because the mountain craft needed to get them this high isn't gained in a day or two on a climbing wall in South London.

#

For the first time in weeks, Spike sees Buffy looking out of her eyes, the real Buffy, the Slayer who he used to love. Up until now, she was a harried sick woman who didn't even resemble anyone he knew. He puts up his hand, and she waggles hers in greeting.

"Welcome to Bhutan, Buffy."

"Glad you're here, Spike. Has anything happened?"

"Not a bloody thing, Slayer. You waking up is the highlight of my day."

A little color tinges her cheeks. He hadn't meant it as the mild flirting it sounds like, but if she's flattered, he'll pretend he did mean it.

The first finger of dawn touches the edge of the abyss in front of them.

Spike shrugs. "Gotta say goodbye, now, Slayer."

Buffy's eyes are on the lightening sky. At the last moment she turns and calls out to him, "Are you okay in that cabin?"

"Got a truckle bed and a blanket, and light to read by. What more does a man need?"

#

He doesn't look very Spike-like here, dressed in army winter gear, a hat just like hers, lined with fleece, with earflaps and mouth flaps. On the lower slopes of the mountain, he wore a watch cap, so she doesn't even know if his hair is still platinum. She hasn't asked. Only his voice is like the voice she remembers.

Spike gets inside and she hears him turn the lock. There goes the only person she can talk to up here. There is one Sherpa who has knows some English, but he's not inclined to small talk, and even if he were, what would they talk about? Fashion? She's shown Jigme, the head-Sherpa, Aura's photo, and he showed her a picture with seven little black heads on it. Jigme kissed it solemnly and said, "They important, me no important," and she could totally identify with that, because when Aura was small she was grateful for an undisturbed visit to the toilet and her first uninterrupted cup of coffee was like a party. So that was a nice moment, but it isn't not something you can repeat every day.

#

Buffy jogs around the ledge. At first by day, but when she's completely acclimatized, and Midsummer approaches, she starts sleeping during the daylight hours so she can keep watch by night. Now she jogs in the early evening. Spike accompanies her. Their laps are short, and hindered by the cabin, her tent, the Sherpas' tents, the Ladies room and the Men's Room, and also assorted rocks and gullies. Their tempo is not high. What Buffy can see of Spike's face looks relaxed, almost empty.

"So how you been since LA?" she asks. It's kind of embarrassing that she's asking this three weeks into their mission, but her head's been full of other things up until now. Her daughter, left in Dawn's care, because Steve, the asshole, couldn't take her for two months straight. He said. Her lack of stamina, after years of occasional slaying. Boredom, pain in her feet, lack of coffee. No excuse, really.

Spike looks thoughtful. "Alright," he answers after a whole lap has passed.

Buffy waits for another lap and then she can't stand it anymore. "Yeah? That's it? Give me little more to work with, here. What does all alright mean? Does it mean fine, or great, or so-so, or nothing at all happened to you, or you don't wanna talk about it?"

She gasps for breath after that and she sees Spike's smile flash in the flickering, fire-lit night. The Sherpas think they are insane to jog around the plateau in near darkness. No street lighting here.

"All of the above," Spike says, and she knows from the tone of his voice he's taking the piss, a British idiom she's gotten to know intimately.

She'd like to kick him, that's how angry she is, and she hasn't regressed like that in years. Okay. She doesn't know why he's so reticent, and or why he doesn't talk her ears off like he used to., or Mmaybe that's because the things he used to say to her wouldn't be appropriate.

"Okay, here goes. Buffy moved to London in 2007. She meets Steve and they get married. Aura is born in 2009 and is now seven years old. Steve left us two years ago. I've been working with Andrew and Willow on and off. Not because I wanted to, but because any other job I tried sucked. And I suck at jobs. So I'm still the Slayer, the oldest, wrinkliest, saggiest Slayer in history. And for some peculiar reason, although you've been working with Andrew and Willow too, we've never ever encountered each other. Was that coincidence or did you try real hard to stay out of my way?"

Spike says nothing. The occasional flashes of his face that Buffy sees as they pass the corner fires tell her nothing. She's thinking there is a big heavy reason for his avoidiness. Otherwise, if it meant nothing, he would know what to say. Does she really want to know that reason, or would she rather leave it undisturbed? She doesn't know. It's not narcissistic to think it's got something to do with her, right?

#

The Slayer jogs next to Spike, panting too hard for their leisurely tempo, still not completely adjusted to the altitude. It worries him. Only a few days to go and it'll be Midsummer. When they'll both have to be at their best and most alert, because Andrew hasn't been able to tell them exactly what they'll be up against. Spike's thought about her question all day, lying in his silver-lined crinkly nest, sleeping a little, rereading Pablo Neruda by the arc light that both illuminates and heats his six by five abode. Is it politeness that makes her ask? At least she volunteered her own life summary, which is not nothing on the scale of Buffy forthcomingness. Thinking about this is like picking at an old scar, because you think there might still be a little bit of glass imbedded in your flesh. Is it worth the trouble and the pus and the pain to open the long healed scab up and dig into yourself on the off chance that you will find something?

"I lost all my friends when LA slid into the sea," he says, surprising himself as well as the Slayer.

"Thank God Hollywood survives," Buffy lobs back, and trips over a rock. She's flat out on her face. She unerringly finds his hand in the darkness and hauls herself up. "Sorry, Spike. I don't know why I said that. I'm sorry for your loss."

The formal words don't mean a whole lot to him. It's been ten years, after all, and he knew the LA Gang for less than a year.

"Who are your friends now?" she asks in a subdued little voice when they jog on. She does him the courtesy of supposing he does have friends.

"See a bit of Andrew when I'm in town," he says. "Got my mates all over the world, don't I? Willow, Dawn. People you don't know. Demons. Clem."

"That sounds nice."

They're silent after that.

#

Buffy still hasn't asked Spike what color his hair is, and she really wants to know. Their attempts at conversation don't feel right to her. Stilted, overly polite. Like strangers on a train. That is not how she wants to talk to him, but she doesn't seem to be able to find another way. Why is it so hard? They may not be friends anymore, but they've been in constant company for weeks now. There should be some kind of cordial working relationship. Buffy winces as her brain produces these words. She's glad she hasn't said them out loud. She can just imagine Spike's scoffing at them. Working side by side. Feelings develop. Of friendship, of course, what else?

The sun burns hard on the plateau and she's hiding in her tent. She should be sleeping, but instead she's trying to get herself off. Her tent is surrounded by Sherpa tents, and she can hear them talking and walking around a couple of feet away from her. It doesn't feel particularly private, even if they can't see her, but she's been fizzing with suppressed lust for days now, and she hasn't had an orgasm since the start of the mission. Too fricking scared to try, and too embarrassed to bring her vibe. The batteries would have run out, anyway, but most of all she didn't want the Sherpas or Spike to see it. Is she a grown woman comfortable with her sexuality or not? Okay, not. She rubs herself, licks her fingers when she doesn't get wet soon enough. Jesus, she's been at it for twenty minutes already and she just can't relax enough to get off. She should just admit she's afraid Spike is awake and that he can tell what she's doing, at a distance of hundred feet, just from her heartbeat.

#

The sky is the pale gray of early morning and Spike goes off to his cabin. "Sleep well, Buffy," he says. "I'll be listening to some really loud Punk music on my earphones and then put my earplugs in when I go to sleep."

Buffy's face burns. She hates him so much. But anger is a wonderful way to warm a person up, and she's not as stiff as usual after her morning cup of rancid chai. She crawls into her down-filled sleeping tube bag and lies there, simmering with mortification. Spike did know what she was up to. And she can't be sure he was telling the truth, can she? Maybe he's listening in on her right now. She comes, hard and sudden, and bites on the sleeping bag to still her mewling. At least Spike can't read her mind; he doesn't know she was thinking of him thinking of her alone in his bunk. What would Spike be doing right now? Her hand steals back to her clit. Just one more and then she will sleep. Hey, how come Spike's iPod's still running?

#

The Slayer crawls out of her tent, staggering and waving from sleepiness. Her face is pale and puffy, her hair a greasy mess. She yawns without covering her mouth and loudly does her business behind a couple of rocks, also known as the Ladies' Room. She's not the fresh-faced girl of ten years ago, and there's a little waddle in her gait that was never there before. Childbirth, Spike assumes. They've hardly ever spoken in the intervening years, but does that mean there are things unsaid? Spike has no idea. He's awake before she is, kindling the morning fire in near-darkness so he can watch her undignified and intensely Buffy way of waking up, inhale her sleepy unwashed Buffy smell. He felt his heart squeeze when she showed him the photo of her daughter. He jerks off when he hears her heart quicken in arousal, he in his silver cabin, she in her tent, with a hundred feet between them. He doesn't think it means anything, though. Otherwise, he would have looked her up long ago.

He holds out a mug to her and happily waits for her to make her yuk-face. She does make it, right on cue. Her nose wrinkles, her eyes disappear and her cheeks quiver with the force of her bwooarghlll.

It's not as cute as when she was twenty, because the skin of her face is loosening a bit and the first signs of crow's feet fan out from the corners of her eyes. Spike doesn't care. It was never her youth or beauty that mattered to him.

She dips her nose into the battered tin mug and inhales deeply. "Spike! I smell coffee. Is this actually really real coffee?"

"It is, Buffy. Drink up before it gets cold."

Buffy closes her eyes, turns her face into the red sunlight, red as blood, and slurps down her first swallow of too hot coffee. Spike moved heaven and earth to get the Sherpas to bring some from the nearest town, 50 miles as the crow flies, and a week's travel over the mountain pathways.

"Oooh. I died and went back to heaven." Her eyes snap open. "Is it tonight? Is the coffee to prepare me for tonight? I thought tomorrow?"

"Andrew radioed in this afternoon. Did you know he spoke Dzonghka? Anyway, both days are equally long, although Midsummer is supposed to be tomorrow night. He says to be ready in any case."

Buffy throws a look over her shoulder in the direction of the cave, and he follows her gaze. The tunnel entrance is hidden in plain view on a rock face that is in deep shadow 364 days of the year, and that's where it's going to happen tonight. Or tomorrow.

#

When she gets back to civilization, when this is over, she's gonna stay in a hot bath for, like, a week. This evening her bath is a battered tin pan that the Sherpas also use to boil water, but she makes do. Nobody here to complain about her lack of hygiene. She washes her face with the precious cup of water allotted for that, and furtively scrubs her pits and her crotch. It's not that she doesn't appreciate Spike waiting for her with coffee, actual coffee, which is like the best present ever, but she vividly remembers the acuity of his nose and that is just embarrassing. She's stinky Buffy these days, and the Sherpas are stinky Sherpas, and the only one who doesn't smell off anything except wood smoke and buttered chai is Spike, with his clean, hard, cool white flesh. And a woman who thinks of her colleague in those terms is clearly in trouble. Even the washcloth feels sexy right now. Focus, Buffy. You're in danger. And how would Spike know if her heart beats from lust or from alertness, huh? He can't.

But Buffy takes a vow to stay away from innuendo and keep her brain clear of lustful thoughts. She doesn't want to give Spike the impression she's that girl she once was. She'd never use him for sex again and she really means that, even if, you know, her pussy has other plans. Buffy has tried calling her pussy her cunt when she's talking to herself, but even in the privacy of her own mind, that's one bridge too far.


	2. Chapter 2

After Buffy has devoured her joyless breakfast - Spike heats his blood furtively and drinks it inside his aluminum foil cabin, so as not to alarm the Sherpas - they hunch over the fire and discuss tactics for tonight. To douse the fires or not to douse the fires, that's the question. Andrew's been so vague about the exact shape of the impending evil event, that it's almost impossible to take precautions. They decide to keep one fire burning, in the middle of the plateau, and station themselves on either end, so that they can take advantage of the light or a burning brand if they need to. They lay out the arsenal the Sherpas lugged up: swords, lances, axes, crossbows, stakes, flamethrowers, holy water, amulets, poison darts, portable spells, arc lights rigged to the small generator, plastic sheets for asphyxiation, cords for strangulation, nets for the unkillable, a sonic weapon and ear protectors. Spike has never had occasion to use most of them, and he doubts that he will now. When in a tight spot, he tends to use the fists and fangs he's most comfortable with, and maybe a sword or two.

He nudges a peculiar hybrid object, a cross between an axe and a scythe. "That still the original The Axe?"

"Yep," Buffy says.

"Use it often?"

"Nah. Most demons respond pretty well to ordinary axes. But I thought I'd bring it, just in case."

"Yeah. Never know what might work, eh? Not expecting Turok Han, that's for sure."

"Me neither. Something pretty big, though."

"Yeah. Maybe we should have brought stilts. Or Andrew should have sent taller heroes."

Buffy grins. "I knew I shouldn't have thrown away those platform shoes in 2007."

There's a little hiccup behind his breastbone at this comradely look of hers. They're cool. They can do this together. It's been a while since they last fought as a team, but Spike's got every confidence that it will be like always. Seamless cooperation. As long as it's physical, they've always dealt well together.

Spike rises from his crouch and holds out his hand to Buffy. "Shall we?"

"Shall we what?" Buffy says, but accepts his hand and steps across the fire to his side.

"Dunno. Take our positions? Or maybe inspect the crime scene to be?"

"Sure. I wanna have a good poke -around in that cave anyway, in case we have to fight inside it. If they come out of there."

"Andrew says either out of the cave or from the sky into the cave, ancient manuscripts bollocksed up as per usual."

Spike trains his flashlight on the entrance of the cave. It lights on sharp rock teeth and smooth rock gums where the teeth have broken off. In the weak beam of the flashlight both shine reddish, like old blood. It doesn't have a nice level floor like movie caves, with the occasional stalactite or stalagmite for color. It's not made out of mashed paper or foam, either. It's all jagged spears of rock crowding in on them as they clamber over and under, and have to stop after a dozen feet in or so, as the cave mouth narrows to a sphincter leading down into the mountain. Big enough to throw a baby through, maybe, but that's about it. Nothing really big and scary could come out of it, but you never know with demons. Maybe it's a portal from another dimension on Midsummer. They just don't know.

#

This is a night of heightened alertness, so the Sherpas are also awake and Buffy and Spike traverse the ledge even more times than when they're doing their so-called jogging. It's boring. The temperature drops to below zero, the stars glitter hard and inimical from their peepholes in the sky, her hands are only warm if she's more or less putting them in the fire.

At one point Spike says he has to show her something.

"What?" she says, numbed by cold and inaction.

"I have a letter from Andrew I'm supposed to show you midnight sharp before Midsummer. Sorry."

His voice sounds sincere. It's hard to judge a person in darkness with them wearing thick camouflage caps and mufflers and eye protectors.

"I don't think I can read by firelight," Buffy says, a little snippily.

"My cabin has good lighting," Spike says, apologetically, which always raises her hackles. She doesn't like him apologetic, it brings back memories.

Why has Andrew given the letter to Spike and not to her, huh? It's not fair to give him the advantage. Who's the senior operative here? Hm. Maybe it's Spike. It is entirely possible Andrew likes and respects Spike more than her, the senior Slayer. Buffy promises herself to be professional. Act like she hasn't just been hurt and rejected. That little creep.

Spike lets her into his cabin, for the first time ever since she helped staple the aluminum foil into place. The flashlight, and later the arc light reflect thousands of times into the alternately smooth and creased foil, and maybe this is what popcorn feels like before it pops. The wind sneaks in through the gaps between the rough planks and rustles the sheets of foil with a tinny sound that Buffy feels in her fillings.

Spike digs into his backpack, which seems to contain only black clothes. He finds an envelope. Before he can open it, Buffy says impulsively. "Take off your cap?"

"What? Whatever for, Slayer?"

He must feel defensive. Because he never calls her Slayer anymore.

"Because. It's hard to talk to someone....I just want to see the color of your hair," Buffy says.

Spike utters a mini-raspberry of surprise.

Buffy waits.

Spike doesn't move.

At last, he shrugs, opens up the hat's Velcro fastenings and takes it off. His hair is mussed, showing an inch of outgrowth, but is still very platinum.

Buffy's smile stretches to her ears, and she wants to reel it in but she just can't stop smiling. "Cool. It's still bleached. I was hoping it was, you know?"

Spike looks away from her and puts his cap back on. "If I'd known you took a keen interest in my hair color I'd have sent you a memo," he says gruffly.

"Don't be a grumpy old man. I like it that you haven't changed that, at least."

"You mean I changed everything else?"

"Well, yeah. You have a soul, and you're a hero, and you're this cool adventurer guy who gets to travel all over the world and stamp out evil. What's not to envy?"

For the first time in days, he looks into her eyes. Or maybe he does it all the time, but it's hard to tell under all the gear. His eyes are as silver as the aluminum foil. The effect is to make him more inhuman, pale and cold and perfect in his silver palace.

"Envy. Buffy the Vampire Slayer envies me?"

"Is that so strange?"

"Well, excuse me, yeah." He says 'Yea -huh". With a big emphasis on the yea. "Don't want to bring up old memories that are best buried, but that's not what you thought about me. And what the bloody hell is keeping you from living that exact same life?"

Buffy shrugs. "Apart from Aura? Never mind. Let's just concentrate on Andrew's letter. For all we know, the world is ending while we're here bickering."

"We're not bloody bickering! You said..."

Buffy leaves Spike in his hall of mirrors. She's not doing this. Not getting angry at him, ever again.

#

Bugger. She's run out and they haven't read Andrew's letter.

What the hell does she mean, wanting to see his hair? Christ, he should have stuck to his guns when Andrew first asked him to take on a mission with Buffy. He can think of several mates of his who would have thought this trip a great lark. Then he'd have been spared the bloody wrenching memories and the scent and her heart beating all the time. His dreams are only of her, and he hasn't been like that in years. Fucking years. Girlfriend after girlfriend. Happy.

She can stew in her own petty anger for all he cares. Stupid bint.

#

Buffy sits by the fire, her butt cold as ice, and tries to sulk. For some reason sulking isn't easy in this mountain perch. The clean, pure dry air, and the faint fluting rumble of the glacier below, simply waft her sulkiness out of her and what remains is a faint sadness. Regret might be a better word. Might-have-beens and if-onlys chase each other between stacks of dusty memories.

#

"Sorry about that, Buff. I'll read it to you."

"Okay." Several heartbeats. "I'm sorry I blew up. I don't usually have a temper like that. Something here is making me antsy."

Right, something is making her antsy. Spike reckons it's him. Not to be all swollen-headed, but her endless masturbating keeps him awake for hours on end. But. He's not Giles, to ignore his Slayer's intuitions until she fires him. Could be something her honed Slayer senses are picking up.

He fishes the letter from his pocket and starts skimming the contents.

_"No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio_  
_o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:_  
_tea mo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,_  
_secretamente, entra la sombra y el alma."_

"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose..." Has Andrew gone bonkers? This is one of the poems he read last night, albeit in translation, but his Spanish is good enough to recognize it.

"What it is?" Buffy demands impatiently. "You look funny."

"Don't I always?" he answers, absorbed by the riddle.

"No. You're very...What's it say?"

"It's a poem."

"Oh. And after that?"

"Nothing. Not even a signature. What the hell did Andrew mean by it?"

And how come he'd been reading this very poem this afternoon, dreaming of Buffy, pretending he wasn't, even to himself? Did Andrew know that he's always carried the Neruda poems with him on missions, the past five years or so? Those poets that can't, read, he supposes.

"Let's radio him."

"He'll be asleep," Buffy says, but she's already on her way to the radio and its designated Sherpa.

The radio isn't working. It's supposed to withstand everything cell phones can't, even if there was any kind of reception up here, but it's silent, wheezing out the song of empty airwaves. Not a snatch of music or the Tibetan resistance groups they usually receive before they find Andrew's call sign in Thimphu.

"Bugger." The sky is pinking to their left.

"I'll try again around noon, Spike," Buffy says, putting her mitt on the sleeve of his thick parka. Spike wishes he could feel her hand on his skin instead. "I was going to have a look at that cave again, anyway."

"Ta. G'nite, Buff."

"G'nite, Spike."

Her eyes are locked on his nape like laser beams. He shouldn't fear sniper Cupid, although his heart's not armor-plated. He was first shot a long time ago, and there's no such thing as double indemnity in love.

#

Buffy performs her morning ritual of tea-slurping and stretching. She crawls into her sun-warmed bed and tries to sleep. She's gotta be at peak alertness tonight. Be able to fight whatever's coming at them.

Seven perfect relaxation exercises later, sleep has not come. Whatever made her snap at Spike for no good reason still travels along her nerves, shrieking and shaking her limbs like the Chicago El. She counts to one thousand. Her limbs are motionless and heavy, and by all rights, she should be long asleep. Spike's head on the pillow below her, his eyes black with longing, looking up at her in utter trust, his mouth soft and pink beneath her lips. This time she strangles him until his face is blue and his tongue lolls out. The necklace of skulls around her neck jangles against her black, shellacked skin.

The thing that she's sure is in her, around her, debrides her nerves. They must be lying bare like stripped copper wire by now.

Buffy sits up. She's a Slayer, and her body is telling her something. It's almost noon on her watch. So she did sleep? She doesn't remember sleeping or dreaming. The sleeping bag has become twisted around her legs in a spiral, as if she's walked up a staircase winding like the whorls of a shell. She fights free of it. She dresses, painstakingly, although her fingers jitter and her heartbeat is telling her she's in a hurry.

Outside all is silent and still. The air is like boiling chicken stock, yellow, salty, with pockets of liquid superheated fat that sting her eyes and halt her step. Where are the Sherpas? They are not sitting gossiping around their little fire as usual, preparing that ghastly chili and cheese dish they like so much. The sun has found the cave entrance and its black rocky rim is now red and shiny with heat.

A sound behind her makes her wheel around sharply. She's instantly dizzy and spreads her arms like a tightrope walker to keep standing. Squinting her eyes tight against the sun's hostile glare, she sees the world on top of the world spread out before her. Row upon row of dun and black mountains, bald and distrustful, glaring at her reproachfully or giving her the cold shoulder. A lone bird circles up on an almost visible column of hot air. For a second, it floats over the glacier's racing stripes and then plummets down with a raucous cry.

Released by the death scream of the bird, Buffy's hold on her own balance slips and she falls down, pole-axed. She lies spread-eagled on the harsh, bumpy rock, her eyes tearing up with pain, and that saves her as the sun's prying copper fingers attempt to fry her brain.

She is the center of the world. It wheels around her, ponderous and vast, on the imaginary but intensely painful and tangible axis rammed through her sternum. Ages pass, and her only defense is to blink and produce tears. The heat of the sun warms the seam of her thick padded pants and it's almost as if....She wants to squirm, get her ass out of the sun. The soles of her feet are so firmly planted on the earth, why can't she move? Why aren't the Sherpas rushing out to help her?

She melts and runs like wax and it pools on the rock, hot enough to bake an egg, and she's gonna bake, split open like a cake baking too fast, so the sun can get at her soft gooey interior and lick her out.

She urgently needs saving and she should be able to save herself but she can't move, helplessly pinned as she is under the sun's stern gaze; feminine, open, powerless, forced to accept his glare and his gifts.


	3. Chapter 3

Her face is cool. Buffy's eyes snap open, her rational brain tells them not to, you can sear your eyes by looking straight at the sun for a second, but she's safe. The spike of rock that hides the Ladies' Room from plain sight is sheltering her face. It's a narrow shadow, and she won't have long to gather her steaming thoughts, cool them down and save herself. She can move. Carefully she rolls her whole body into the shadow of the rock and debates. Will she make it to Spike's cabin? It the most likely place to protect her from the malignant sulfur pustule in the sky.

Wake Spike first. "Spike!" she yells. "Help! Spike!"

She waits. Precious seconds tick by. Finally a cautious voice sounds. "Slayer?"

"Open the door! I'm coming!"

Buffy turns on her feet like a cat and sprints for the door. It's like a hundred feet or so. Still too far. Halfway through, the light hammers down on her skull and splits her thoughts open like a grape. Her feet forget what they were doing and she stumbles down, headlong, her arms reaching for something, for nothing.

#

The Slayer is going down. Bugger. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Spike rips one of the foil blankets from its staples and flings himself into the day's maw, quivering with heat and malice. As he reaches for her hands, his burst into flame. No time to worry about that, he clasps her to his chest and they stumble back. The sun scorches his bare heels and sets fire to his pants.

They fall into the cabin and Spike kicks the door shut with one flaming foot. The blanket douses the smoldering bits of him with hissing and crinkling noises. Buffy sits up, clearly recovered from whatever hit her out there. She takes his hands into hers, cooler than his at the moment, but that will pass, of course.

"Thanks, Spike. Your poor hands."

"Not a problem, Buffy. Hands will heal soon enough." He pokes his feet, but they're not too bad. His thermal long johns have gaping holes on the calves where they've melted away. "What happened out there, love?"

That slipped out. He doesn't think she noticed.

"The sun got to me. I fell over, and I couldn't move, and it was sort of..." She's blushing, or maybe it's a sunburn? Whatever it is, she finds it hard to get the words out. "Warming me up. Getting me all hot and ready for something."

She meets his eyes, determined to be adult about this. His scent memory informs him that, yes, she was all creamy and juicy when he held her in his arms. His bloody tackle stands up eagerly with this thought, and it's fucking embarrassing when you're wearing stretchy underpants instead of trusty stiff jeans that hide a multitude of sins.

He shrugs. "Sorry."

"That's okay. I can't help it either."

Right. They're adults. Stuff happens, and they can be cool and professional about it.

"You think it's got something to do with tonight?"

Buffy's still stroking his hands, pink flesh now appearing beneath the flaking blackness. They're incredibly sensitive and his cock won't go down.

"Has to. Trying to disable me. The Sherpas didn't help me. Maybe they've run off?"

"Let me check."

It isn't easy to stand up in his condition. The rub of the cloth against his boner as he moves is making it worse. A little moan escapes from his lips.

"Are you okay?" Buffy asks.

"My feet," he lies. "It's nothing." At least she's not touching him now.

He walks to the peephole he's made in the aluminum and through the wooden planks, with a clear view of the Sherpa tents and fires.

"Have a look, lo...Buffy."

Buffy stands on tiptoes, disturbingly close, disturbingly closer when she needs him to help keep her balance. The Sherpas have plastered themselves in the shadow of a narrow overhang, and they're not going to make it through the day in there. One of them, Jigme, Spike thinks, lies supine, crucified by the baleful eye of the sun, his eyes open and staring. Dead, or in best case, blind and crazy.

#

It's torture to stand this close to Spike, to not look at the straining bulge in his thermals. Buffy's determined not to give in. That would be wrong, because it wouldn't be them. It would be the magic making them crazy. The sun was blaring down at her, trying to pry open her eyes to get at her soft squishy brain and cook it like porridge. Porridge is gross and she needs actual brains to think, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Why are they standing here again? Oops, yeah, Sherpas. A good little Slayer would go out and rescue them, but she can't. She's not going to lie there again, legs open to that thing in the sky. The only thing her legs will open for is Spike. If she were going there, and she's not.

His hand is resting on the shiny foil wall, large and pale. It has shiny pink patches on it and around those patches a flaking, blackened edge. Her eyes are so close to it that she can see the pores on the unblemished parts of creamy skin, the short light brown hairs that cover the back of the hand and the first digits, some of them short and crispened. She could blow on those hairs, she's that close. Spike's nails are pink and shiny, and his manicure has held out up better than hers. What is the world coming to if men like Spike have manicures, huh?

Buffy lifts up her own hand, heavier than it's ever been before and turns Spike's hand over. She needs to see the inside. Even the palm of his hand is a different color than hers, pinker. The pad of the thumb is thick and fleshy, and she'd like to put her teeth in it. The lines and creases on his palm, what story do they tell? She knows nothing about palmistry (palmology?) but she traces the thickest, deepest line from the outside to the base of his third finger. Spike doesn't move his hand while she's doing this, but it trembles ever so slightly beneath her fingers. He has calluses at the base of his fingers, much like hers, a little orangey, from handling all those weapons. She strokes his middle finger upwards, intrigued by the smoothness and softness after the harder, rougher callus. Then there's the tip of the finger, twice as wide as her forefinger. Does that mean it's twice as sensitive?

Spike starts talking to her in a hoarse voice, so close to her ear her spine arches from the sound of his voice. The place beneath the ear is the most sensitive place spot on her whole body, or at least it is right now. She doesn't understand his words, something about salt and roses, shadows and souls. He used to talk to her just like that when they were fucking. It's as if she can feel the rough concrete of his crypt walls under her fingers again, and he's moving in and out of her, too slow, torturing her, preventing her from coming because she needs it hard and fast, and all the time that voice goes one and on and says beautiful incomprehensible things that she refuses to hear or understand. He should say dirty, nasty things to her, demean her, abuse her, but instead he's delivering these lines in a suddenly plummy voice and she just can't parse it.

Buffy blinks and the aluminum crinkles a little under her sweaty cheeks. She's not in the crypt, that's all in the past, over and done with, forgiven, forgotten, only it isn't quite like that. Spike leans heavily against her, his whole body flush with hers. A quick check downwards confirms that she's still fully dressed in all her winter gear, and he's still in the thermal pants. That explains the sweating, then.

She can't keep ignoring what is going on. There is going to have to be actual communication on the subject.

"Something out there is doing something to us, Spike," she says, the words sandpaper gobbets in her throat. It's not quite as decisive a communiqué as she'd hoped it would be.

Spike understands. "I know," he moans in her neck, and his hands have snuck around her waist.

"I can't..."

"Can't what?"

Can't stop, can't go on, don't want to have anything to do with you ever again? She needs more info.

"Can't keep myself from feeling like this. I know it's wrong," he pants.

Not so much wrong as inopportune, Buffy thinks. They've got a job to do. This horny spell is preventing them from doing it.

"Yeah. Not now. Not here. We've got to resist."

Spike grabs her shoulders, which makes her waist feel lonely and rejected and turns her around so she can look into his face. Her nipples grab that opportunity to commune intensely with his bare chest. It's a miracle they can sense anything through her five layers of thermal clothing, which must be two inches thick over her chest. She hopes her nipples haven't grown that long.

Spike's eyes keep flicking down over her body, but there's nothing to see but her thick Helly Hansen Arctic jacket. She pulls down her fleece inner collar, so he can at least see her lips.

"Not now? Not here? When, then and where?"

"Later. After. When we're back," she murmurs against his cheek. Hmmm, cheek of Spike.

"What time is it?" Spike whispers.

Oh. Spike is pulling away from her, apparently regaining control. Buffy tries not to let her disappointment show She peels back her jacket, rolls up outer fleece, inner fleece and thermal vest, and there it is, her special clunky mission watch. With stopwatch function and everything.

The hands stand at exactly twelve o'clock. "Noon," she says. "Funny."

Spike falls back against her. She knew it. She knew he couldn't be feeling any lessening of the Spike-Buffy gravity effect. Or maybe the Spike-Buffy gravy effect, because her panties are soaked. Which is so not fun if you haven't seen a washing machine in weeks, and you'd actually welcome a nice babbling brook to beat your clothes in with your bare hands.

Spike sniffs, and Buffy blushes a deeper red. Beet suits her. "I'm sorry," she mumbles.

"No, you smell like heaven, love. It's just - doesn't feel like noon. Feels like later. That watch run alright?"

"Well, yeah, it's like this major brand special watch that Andrew bought for the mission especially. He could hardly part from it."

"Mmmm."

He really shouldn't say 'Mmmm' like that when his lips are so close to her neck. They set off a reverberation in Buffy that is centered suspiciously low in her body and is accompanied by clenching, shuddering and involuntary eye-closing. If she wasn't sort of past feeling anything but lust she'd have been embarrassed.

Spike clenches his jaws, which makes interesting hollows beneath his cheekbones. "Maybe the sun has made it stop?"

Yeah, sure, maybe. Something's doing something to them, and it has to be connected to the thing Andrew has sent them out to fight. There are too many things in that sentence, and yes, the sun has damaged her speech center and left the lust-center up and running, which is, like, her lot.

#

Spike's muscles are paralyzed, and the organs in his body that have no muscles are stiff and motionless. The combination leaves a lot to be desired, but at least he can't act on his baser impulses. He doesn't do that on a mission, because he's not The Bloody, Spike the Bloody, to fuck every female enemy agent that crosses his path. Maybe if he could cross his legs it wouldn't be so bad.

Buffy is trembling and twitching in his arms and he wishes she would stop, because although his control is awesome, at some point he's definitely going to soil his thermal underwear, God bless its quick-drying polypropylene.

"Spike..." Buffy sighs against him. "My legs. I need to lie down."

His lower body spasms a little at the thought of lying down. He's forgotten why it is so urgent not to give in to the lust that hangs tangibly in the air. Working together, feelings develop? No, that's been done to death. He's going to wring Andrew's skinny little chicken neck when they get back. This is a conspiracy. Something magical is going on, connected to the Summer Solstice, no doubt. Why Buffy? Why him? Male, female, ritual marriage, sacrifices. Yeah, you could call what's happened to poor Jigme a sacrifice, and Buffy and he have celebrated the joining of man and woman many times over. Buffy, fertile female, Spike, dead infertile male. Andrew sending him the Pablo Neruda love poem. He knows in his gut these are the building blocks of an explanation of what is happening here, but they're not matching up to a complete puzzle yet.

And Andrew might be a skinny little nerd, who still thinks Counselor Troi and Commander Riker are a match made in heaven, but he's also the frighteningly competent and ruthless Head of Council. And Spike's friend. Admirer, too. He wouldn't set him up, unless he thought it was for his own good. Spike is going to resent that as soon as he's figured out what exactly he's been set up for.

Buffy's still talking and pushing weakly against him. Hm, nice. His cock pushes back and they're getting a serious rhythm going.

"Spike, bed, now!" she says from between clenched teeth and he obeys that voice, he can't not.  
They stagger to the truckle bed and collapse onto it. It holds, miraculously. Buffy groans in relief as her tired muscles let go and her warm, slack weight on his chest is his idea of paradise. Her Buffy scent is quadrupled after all those weeks with bathing in a pan and he doesn't mind a bit. His hands burrow mindlessly under her clothes, healing burns be damned, until he touches moist hot skin. Yes!

Buffy sits up and stares wildly down at him. She flings off her hat and starts ripping off her jacket. The zippers and Velcro fastenings fire off like farts.

Buffy gives up halfway, yanks his pants down and grabs his dick with both hands. "Spike! Why are we fighting this?"

Spike's last sensible thoughts fly to all corners of his brain and he tries futilely to grab after them. "Because. It's. It's."

He can't find the words but he frees his poor confused dick, which is getting all ready to fire, by clasping her hands between his. "No. We're not going to do this. We're stronger than this."

Buffy shakes her head. "I'm not. I'm weak. You have to punish me. Hard. You know where."

"I am strong," he says. "Repeat after me."


	4. Chapter 4

Years later, the pressure in the back of her neck suddenly lessens and Buffy becomes conscious of lying in a cramped position on top of Spike. She smells her own sweat and over-lubricated crotch and the memory of what went on this afternoon. It's a good thing her face is already hidden in the moist crook of Spike's neck, because she has several minutes of embarrassed flushing to do. Skanky unwashed Buffy comes on to only available vampire in spectacularly unsubtle manner, and annoying vampire out-heroes her by managing to hold out. Triple ouch.

Spike shifts beneath her and Buffy is forced to lift up her head. Drops of her sweat lie pooled in the hollow of his clavicles.

"Sorry, Buffy," he says soberly, his forehead furrowed with earnestness. "Don't know what came over me."

"Me too," she says with a nervous laugh. "Is it over, ya think?"

He sits up, neatly folding her body to a sitting position on the other side of the bed. He doesn't want to touch her, obviously. It hurts more than she could ever tell him.

Spike leans in to peek through his spyhole again. "Sun's behind the Zongpha Gang," he says. "We ought to check the cave, see if anything's been going on in there."

Buffy remembers that he's always been good with demon languages; she's never been able to make heads or tails from out of the sounds the Sherpas make as they name the peaks.

She loosens her shoulder muscles experimentally. Could be worse. "No demon hordes pouring from the tunnel mouth?" she asks hopefully. She'd like to hack off some heads of evil creatures, to get rid of all that unresolved sexual tension. She's not going to get any for a long time yet, even if they defeat their adversary tonight, they still have a week's worth of travel ahead before they're back in London.

"Nope. Could bloody well use a spot of violence," Spike mutters.

That perks Buffy up a bit. At least he felt something, even if it was only physical. They're so alike. That must have been what he was talking about, all those years ago, and which only pissed her off then. Stupid younger Buffy. She'd be damn grateful for a vampire with benefits these days. As the saying goes, the times a woman with a kid gets laid are short, frustrating and far between. Spike's ass looks good from this angle.

"You think you can make it to the cave?" she asks quickly, to hide her out-of-control thoughts. "We have to be there before sunset."

"Still getting a few rays too many. In ten minutes or so."

That'll be cutting it close.

Buffy's hungry, but she manfully suppresses the thought of dinner. She'd only get rice and emadatsi, which is like yuck, only there's there're no such things as pizza or Burgers for at least a thousand miles. Spike has blood in stock, of course.

"The roaring of your stomach is distracting me, Slayer," he says. "Piece of chocolate?"

Buffy's stomach seizes up sharply and her mouth floods with saliva. He needs to ask? She smells the chocolate he fishes from out of his trunk from twelve feet away. "Spike, I'm your slave for eternity," she says without thinking.

"If only," he answers lightly.

There's a moment, like when his eyes lock onto yours, and you can't breathe, and you feel like the world is standing still, and his eyes seem bluer than ever, but the smell of chocolate distracts you from that moment, and your stomach rumbles and he turns away. The moment is gone.

"Can't find the bleeding Sherpas," he says and Buffy stuffs the chocolate in her mouth now that he's not looking.

She really wants that moment back, to see if she can make it end another way, but these opportunities they never come twice, do they?

#

The moment they've been anticipating has arrived, and they should hurl themselves out there and eviscerate anything that moves, but Spike demurs. His shiny crinkly cocoon is suffused with warmth and toasty aroma of Buffy, and although he's been strong enough not to throw her on the cot and fuck her senseless, he now feels torpid, sated as if after a meal of a pair of plump nubile girls. They should leave now, before night crashes down with a bang to announce the start of the fun and games. He lifts a reluctant hand and watches gravity tug at it. If it descends it will be on Buffy's breast, swelling only faintly under layers of clothing.

His eyes tear as he strains to keep the evil hand from falling, and the world becomes blurry. He's outmatched, now. The hand will touch her and then all bets are off.

Buffy rolls off him and hauls him up, her voice gruff. "Come on, ba- Spike. My turn. We gotta get going, okay?'"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Spike finally manages to blink and sees Buffy, who's standing well in his personal space, but is buttoning and zipping and Velcroing up in a most businesslike manner.

Is all this being strong and not grabbing one opportunity after another a sign of personal growth, or cowardice? Pondering this question is much less appealing than committing violent acts in Buffy's company, so he lets it slide.

Spike wraps his shiny blanket, only slightly burnt, around himself once more.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

His hand is against the door when Buffy links a hand through one of the many loops on his thermal jacket and holds him back.

"Wait."

"Why?"

"I wanna tell you - just in case, -" she stammers.

Spike's dead heart cartwheels and lands flat on its ass, gasping. "What?"

She casts down her eyes and blushes fierily. "I did mean it."

"What?" The moment the word leaves his mouth he knows what she means, but he can't allow himself to feel it, not now.

Her lips tremble once, he thinks, but she shakes her head and uses her mitt to brush an invisible strand of hair from her face. "Never mind. That's too long ago, I know. I really, really enjoyed working with you again. I hope you won't wait another ten years to let it happen again. Because I'll be too middle-aged to slay, I should think."

"'Course not," he says, the only possible answer. "You'll still kick ass when you're middle-aged."

"I'll be forty-three in ten years. You think that is middle aged?"

Spike's sure the conversation was going somewhere else. He does the only possible thing. He grabs her shoulders and kisses her. The only parts of their faces that are able to touch through the goggles, caps, scarves and hoods are their lips, and he makes the most of it. Her mouth is warm and pliant and when she opens it there is her tongue, and she tastes like the sun, like he remembers, like she smells. She's been to heaven, and it shows in every molecule. Spike feels blessed just to be able to get a taste of that realm at one remove, he thinks, and then he knows that for a silly lie. He'd kiss her if she came straight from hell, wearing horns and stinking of brimstone. There would be interesting uses for the pitchfork, too.

Their goggles grind together with a chirping noise, and when he breaks loose their Velcro hood fasteners have become wedded to each other and have to be torn loose, with a sound like ripping living flesh from the bone. Without speaking, he kicks the door open and propels himself through the sun's deathly sun glare to the cave entrance.

#

Spike moves across the plateau like a foil popcorn packet in an oven, his blanket billowing outward and starting to smoke. Buffy follows hard on his heels, planning to toss him bodily into the cave mouth if she has to. Damn those flammable synthetics their thermal gear is made of. The Sherpas, wherever they are now, were dressed in leather and wool, and those would have come in so useful now. She should have found their bodies and stripped them. With that thought, she collides into Spike as he is sagging to his knees, one living flame, and she grabs straight into the heart of the flame and tosses him into the cave. It's like a toothy mouth, a vagina dentata, and if the teeth were wood, he'd be dead for sure.

Buffy douses her burning mitts and starts beating the guttering Spike-shaped thing on the floor. His foil blanket has fused together with his thermal jacket. Her hands still after she's peeled off the first layer of outer clothing and accidentally lays bare quivering, naked, blue-pink vampire muscle. If he were human, she'd just have to put him under a tepid shower and wait for the ambulance to arrive.

"Spike?"

"Wubby?" he whispers. "Don't banic, wove, just need a widdle dime here. Don't wook."

He's talking through a mouthful of porridge. Buffy tries not to look, but she can still feel him writhing silently beside her. He must be in pain. She shouldn't ask, he's asked for privacy while he heals, but she wants to show him she cares, so much, but touching him will probably only hurt even more.

Funny that it wasn't any easier telling Spike she loved him for the second time. Is that, like, significant? It wasn't hard telling Steve she loved him, even when she still meant it, and even easier when she it started to mean less and less. Telling Aura she loves her is the easiest thing Buffy's ever done and she does it several times a day without even having to think about it. So there is no correlation between the size of the love and the ease of the telling.

"Can you see?" she asks softly, after what feels like hours.

A pause. "Not yet," he says.

In a low voice she starts describing what's happening out there. "The sun is shining straight in here, but as long as we keep our heads down we'll be fine. I never noticed before how red the rock is, but it's almost shiny."

She sniffs, and again to be sure. "Are you smelling this? It's a funny smell. Not like usual. Like, food, or fish, maybe?"

"Me. And bussy."

"What? Oh. Ew. Really?"

"Yeah."

He's right. There's broiled vampire, melting polypropylene, singed hair. But the other one...Does she smell like that when she's horny? It's such an intimate smell, so shameful and secret. That's what panty liners and intimate hygiene products are made for, but Spike's never tried to hide his liking of her natural odors.

"I can't see outside too well, because the sun is shining straight at us. Outside everything looks sort of orangey with the heat and stuff."

Her descriptive powers totally suck.

It's hot in the cave. Is it getting hotter? The smell sure is intense, coming at her from everywhere. The cave's toothy excrescences are shimmering with heat, warping out of shape in the heated air. Buffy takes off her singed glove and touches the cave floor. It's springy, almost soft, like firm young flesh.

The cave's shape suddenly makes a lot of sense to Buffy. She cranes her head to check out the round drain-like tunnel at the end of the cave, and yeah, it does seem bigger. Does she want to put her hand in to check it out? Um, no. Andrew should have sent Willow, she knows all about being inside someone's pussy. She tries not to be judgmental, really, but this is grossing her out.

The cave floor, if the bumpy spiky lower half of the cave can be called that, is softening further and starting to ooze thick, sticky liquid.

They are inside something or someone, and she's pretty sure that this something is going to get laid at any moment now. Who or what is big enough to fuck a mountain? They have to get out of there, they'd be less hindrance to the enormous organ she pictures than a forgotten tampon.

"Spike! We're about to get totally fucked."

Spike doesn't immediately react, but he lies still and she hears him sniff. "Not a metaphor, I reckon?"

"Definitely not a metaphor. We need to get out of her or we'll be mashed to death by a giant penis."

"Not how I imagined this evening ending. Help me up, Buffy."

She has to look. The charcoal colored mass on the cave floor doesn't resemble Spike. Buffy bites her lip.

"I'm gonna hurt you," she says, her voice small.

"Think of me like a barbecued steak, love. On the inside I'm all pink and delicious."

She tries to laugh but it's a squeaky, almost hysterical giggle. "Yeah. I always thought so."

"Huh."

Buffy slides her arm gently under the place where she thinks his shoulder blades are. She doesn't want to, like, accidentally crumble one of his arms.

"Is this the right spot? Spike?"

"Yeah." It comes out in a breathy moan. "Do it."

Buffy lifts him a few inches and then stops. Black flakes rain off him and fall down as powder. Underneath she sees glistening pink and red stuff.

"You sure?"

"Stop," he says. "I'm not healed enough. Sorry."

This is a moment of choice. Spike doesn't ask, would never ask, but Buffy knows exactly what he needs. She's been there before with Angel, and although she's always firmly suppressed the shameful memories, they now pop up in full Technicolor glory. How it wasn't that scary or painful, and pretty damn hot, and dying seemed like an excellent idea.

There's no time to talk this to death. She's kind of sure she can force Spike to do this, but he might not be very grateful after. It's probably going to ruin this tentative possible maybe thing they have going on between them right now. But a girl's gotta be practical. Be ground to pulp by Godzilla's dick or maybe have a disagreement with your not even boyfriend? Easy.

She takes off her glove, and notices it's still warm in the cave. The last finger of sunlight rests on a glistening bulbous rock near the exit. It's gonna be soon. She slashes her wrist and directs the throbbing stream to where Spike's face should be. Hey, she knows his mouth and tongue are reasonably intact, because he talked.

Spike moans in despair, his whole body bucks, trying to get away from her, and then she hears him swallowing, hiccuping gulps she thinks at first are from greed, but then she feels his ribs heaving and she realizes he's crying. She should be glad he has ribs, and the muscle to move them in sobs, but she's just sad. It's always been a silent point of pride for him that he never even tried to drink her. They never talked about it, but she knew that much about him, even then.

"I'm sorry, Spike, I'm really, really sorry, there was no other way. We have to get out of here or die."

He doesn't answer, but drinks steadily. It's not like it was with Angel. It's her wrist, not her neck, less sexy even in normal circumstances, and he's a crispy critter, not a pale beautiful man clasped closely to her body. The arousal from Spike's fierce sucking is turning into hurt, and she's getting a little woozy.

Spike stops. "You're gonna need most of this yourself, love."

Buffy's glad that he's the one who quit drinking. He lost the one point, he shouldn't have to let go of the rest of his pride. She shoves her arms under him and hoists him up. The difference is amazing. He feels so much more solid under her arms, and between the charred bits of fused-together skin and Helly Hansen she can see actual skin. She slings him over her shoulder.

"Go!" she yells.

She's the one who's going, but the yelling keeps her steady.

Buffy stumbles to the exit, just as the last tongue of light flickers out. The plateau is in the shade now, although the western sky is still incandescent with glorious golds and purples against the deep blues marching in from the east.

A sound reverberates through the bones of the mountain, congealing the air into gelid solidity, quivering with the aftermath of the vast sound. Spike slides off Buffy's shoulder, but her hands are stiff and she can't grasp after him. She wants to speak, but her voice is a green taint in front of her face. Her head falls backwards, her hips lift up and her feet float inches off the rocky ground. She's being offered up. Something's coming from the cold deep spaces beyond the sunset, something so ancient and enormous that she hangs helplessly submitted to whatever it wants to do to her.

Spike. Where is Spike? She'll make the sacrifice, that's fine with her, as long as Spike is alright.

Her arms stretch out to the sides, very crucifixial, tightening her body like a bow, the ribcage sticking out with her breasts flattened out on top of it like garnishes of whipped cream. Little garnishes. Her knees draw up and her legs spread. Buffy is no fool, she knows exactly what is going to happen to her, but she can't move. Will Spike please come in and rescue her? She can still breathe and feel and see everything ahead of her, but all she sees is the purpling sky, with tiny stars winking on. Her breath is going fast, matching her heartbeat and the fluttering of her thighs. She's so hot.

#

Spike slithers off Buffy's back like a drop of sweat, tepid, willless, unwanted. His body doesn't even jar when he hits the floor; there is that little tension in his muscles.

The blood she's given him, which he hated to receive, is coursing through him, knitting up all the charred and unraveled bits back together in that web of magic and bone that is a vampire. He could blame her for punching through his self-imposed sobriety, but on the other hand there's this incredible joy singing through his veins. He's done without this for ten years, longer if you count his chipped period. Spike wills Buffy to heal him faster, he needs to fight beside her. He can hear her moan, but not see her.

A band of muscle attaches itself to his hipbone and he can turn over. Buffy hangs in the air in the cave entrance, shimmering and quivering like a golden-haired Frodo in an invisible web. If there's a web, there's always a Shelob, Spike knows that well enough and he turns back to see what is going to come at her from outside.

At first, he sees nothing, but then the blackened, star-pimpled night sky erupts into a bulge of sky stuff, as if someone's pounding a fist through the backcloth of the heavens. It grows as fast as a sunspot, a liquid form made of air and bent light. Spike stands up, jerking like a puppet where charcoaled muscles and tendons are missing connection. His head turns away from the sky-arm against his volition and he looks into Buffy's desperate eyes. They have failed. Whatever Andrew wanted them to do, they've managed nothing more than whining, running and hiding, and now they're going to be used like marionettes.

The force, or thing, that is steering him crucifies him in the steaming, curdling air of the plateau. The sky arm hits him in the back and punches straight through his spine and belly. As sense and reason leave him, his last thought is that what's taking possession of him is not an arm.

#

Buffy feels the splitting boards of the derelict house poking in to her back, and she just manages to hold on by grabbing a beam or something behind her head. Something else, Spike, is poking her somewhere else and it's nothing like she could ever have imagined. He pistons into her, she's steaming, flowing like water around him, the air perfumed by sweat and slick come and fear.

She looks into his eyes, knowing he loves her, knowing this must be the pinnacle of his existence. Nothing's ever going to top that, even burning up body and soul in the cleansing fire of the amulet. Her whole body clenches around him, through him, accepting him and everything that he's giving. She can top this, she can, and the knowledge gives immeasurable freedom.

She grabs the back of his neck so he can't look away. "I love you," she says and sees him die the small death of infinite relief and happiness.

They are making music together, weaving the world whole again in the slow dance of thrust and counterthrust, of mingling sweat and saliva, of looking and seeing only one another, of giving the other his or her due. They speak words of promise to each other, to take only what is given freely, to cherish and protect, to bring forth in joy, to be in harmony.


	5. Chapter 5

Someone opens a curtain with the sound of cloth tearing and the light that penetrates Buffy's brain illuminates memories that make her cringe in shame. The other curtain opens too, and the world jerks into focus. She shouldn't have opened her eyes. On the other hand, it's cold enough to freeze her tits off, a real danger, as she seems to have mislaid her clothes. Wait, this is not a duvet cover, it's her jacket. This is not a mattress, it's Spike. Her heart skips and her hips flow against his. Tears of joy scatter the piercing daylight into dancing rainbows.

She closes her eyes again to try and make sense of her body's reactions. Where are they? What has happened between them to make her feel so...married? She must have lost her memory. Perhaps it's only temporary, and if her husband would just bestir his lazy ass and make her coffee.

Her mouth floods with saliva and her stomach joins in enthusiastically. Muesli and yogurt would go down well, but if she cares to indulge in bacon and eggs, or pancakes, it wouldn't say no.

Buffy shifts her arm out of a cramped position and hits her elbow hard against something hard. Her funny bone creates a tingle to her pinky finger. "Ouch!"

Beneath her, Spike stretches languidly, and the roll and glide of his body starts up a pleasant jiggle and tingle in other body parts. Spike knows her other funny bone.

"Buffy?"

"Hmmm." Buffy nuzzles his neck, and nips the cream skin lightly in that spot below his ear where he likes to be bitten hard.

"Now's not the time for that, sweetheart," he mumbles and strong hands try to pry her off.

"Spikespike says not," she says.

"Wha? Buffy. Wake up. Look around."

As she lifts her head to do that, limp, but willing to do as he asks because it's him, he takes advantage of the moment to slip her off and set them both upright. Something hard and pointy, and not in the good senses, pokes her ass.

Memory batters her levees and they give out against the floods gracelessly. Mountains. Blood red rock. They're lying on the not so comfortable floor of the cave where everything happened last night. Outside the sky is paling into an embarrassed dove gray. Okay, Spike still holds the record for guy-who's-always-there-in-the-morning, no matter how embarrassing the night before. Steve spent their wedding night puking in the bathroom, and she was kind of relieved he'd fallen asleep in the tub.

"Jesus, Spike, what the hell happened?"

Spike rubs his eyes. "Don't you remember?"

Buffy avoids his gaze as she busies herself with pulling on her clothes. "Sure. But what did it mean? We were like hand puppets in an evil Muppet show."

Spike grimaces. "Not quite. Yes, we were used. Avatars of the gods."

"Gods?! No kidding?"

"Dunno. Didn't feel evil. To me. You?"

Buffy wrinkles her nose to find the right definition of her feelings. "Maybe it was evil. Wicked is always kind of sexy, don't you think?" She backtracks at Spike's expression. "Maybe it's just you, okay?"

Spike is starting to look more and more naked as Buffy wrests her many layers of clothes from under and around him.

"Thanks, I reckon," he says. "Well. Only meant I don't think this was some kind of grand plan of demonic evil. Take over the world, kill all of humanity, rob a bank kind of evil."

Buffy agrees. "But then what was it for?" she tries to feel the proper amount of outrage. "Our bodies were used against their will. That's like-" the word she can never use when he's around. Only that's been over so long ago, that she's gonna try it out. "-rape."

Spike lifts an eyebrow. "You feel raped?"

"God, no. I think I redefined the phrase 'multiple orgasms'. You?"

"Emptied out, more like. Limp and spent. In a good way."

"It was good for you?"

"Oh yeah."

And now to go on from here. Buffy falters. She zips up her last zipper and yanks her cap over her ears.

"But again, why?"

Spike sighs. "Can I borrow that cap, Buffy?"

"Nothing I haven't seen before, but sure. You want everything else to burn?"

"No, but I can hear the Sherpas coming up the path."

Shoot, she's forgotten all about the Sherpas.

#

Spike counts heartbeats. One less Sherpa. Presumably Jigme has indeed died. A sacrifice has been made. A marriage between Sky and Earth consummated? Or should it be demon and human? He needs to mull this over, preferably with a lot of pints and Andrew's company. He's not forgotten what Buffy said to him, radiantly, giving him the greatest gift she could think of. He's sure she meant it at the moment, which is a novelty to be cherished, but now in the cold light of morning she seems embarrassed and unsure. It's his own fault, too. He should just have kissed her, or even better, woken her up with a brisk morning shag.

There's too much happening at once for him to deal with. Buffy not only shagging him and telling him she loved him, but before that forcing him to drink her blood. He knows with his mind that it saved him, and probably, therefore, both of them, because where would that elemental energy have gone without a receptacle? Doom and destruction instead of revitalization and balance. Still, he resents having had no say in his rescue. Childish of him but he still feels it.

"Gonna get my clothes," he says quickly to Buffy and runs through the last morning shade to his cabin. It stands there as if nothing happened. He dons his reserve pair of clothing. No extra thermal outerwear, but then that was mostly for the Sherpas' benefit. Not as if he needs it.

He watches the Sherpas hesitate to take the final steps onto the plateau. But then they spot Buffy and as one, they kneel onto the rocky ground and prostrate themselves. Buffy stands and lets it happen, but Spike sees her quick look over her shoulder into his direction. Sorry, he doesn't know what's happening either. The Sherpas honoring Buffy does give him new food for thought. They seem to have expected this? He remembers Jigme's distinct lack of cheer. Maybe he knew he'd be sacrificed. Spike misses his mobile to hash this over instantaneously with Andrew, or Google the Net. He's been so thoroughly technologified it's sad.

The Sherpas don't have a lot to say, maybe because Spike only speaks a few words of Dzongkha. He gets obeisances too, wholeheartedly, their original reserve over his strangeness completely won over. The Sherpas indicate they want to leave the plateau. Spike can't think of a reason to stay and assents. Buffy takes no part in these negotiations, because her language skills are even more minimal than his are. Jigme, the dead Sherpa, was the only one with a bit of English. Poor bugger. His body is gone, and the Sherpas make vague motions when asked as to the whereabouts of the corpse.

Daylight forces Spike into his cabin. He can't help with the desultory packing they can do. in preparation. He waits. Buffy is comatose in her own tent. How did that happen? Has he been telegraphing so clearly he's in limbo about what he wants? Never did have a good poker face. Late that night, Buffy and the Sherpas nail Spike in his coffin.

#

Before the butt-crack of dawn, lit by torches, Buffy climbs up the roof of Spike's makeshift cabin and pries loose the planks one by one. They were all carried up here in the crate that protects Spike from sunlight. No trees up here. Spike accepts the planks from her without speaking and the Sherpas reassemble the crate quickly and competently. The foil blankets go inside and Spike lays down in the narrow space. Six feet long and two wide? Buffy doesn't get how he can stand to be cooped up in it. She knows he has the same experience as she has, waking up in a coffin after her death. Maybe time gives perspective.

When Spike is safe, and a gray, reluctant morning arrives, she and the Sherpas pack their tents and the rest of the camping gear. Her heart is thumping like it did the first week she came here. Why? Mission accomplished. Andrew-planned possession lived through. Maybe it's the gray skies that depress her. She hasn't seen anything but blue sky blaring down at her since she came here.

It starts snowing. That is not funny. She didn't much like climbing up the narrow mountain trails, and how will she get down them if they're slippery and she can't even see the path?

Two Sherpas help her in the climbing harness and start hooking her up. They're pretending she's going to climb down on her own, but she's leashed so tightly on both sides that she might as well be a blanket roll.

Within the hour they're set to go. The Sherpas have managed to pack about ten times the amount of luggage she and Aura have in about a tenth of the time. Does that make them a hundred times more efficient? Another Sherpa takes the lead now, because Jigme is dead.

The day reaches a medium level of grayness and then stops brightening. By the time they're twenty feet down the path it's snowing, thick flakes that stick to her eyelashes and turn the world into a black and white vortex. It was pretty damn scary climbing up here, and Buffy discovers that climbing down is way, way scarier. She slides off the path about every five minutes, saved only by the ropes that tie her to the Sherpas. Soon she's wishing she was lying in a coffin, like Spike, because she's completely useless at staying on her feet. She also discovers she's never been truly, physically afraid like this. The heartstirring lurch you get when you're bungling over a chasm thousands of feet deep goes straight from the spine to the guts, no brains needed. It's not the same as fighting Glory or Angelus, because you can never become good enough to defeat gravity. Well, you could grow wings, and that is why humanity invented the helicopter, Buffy thinks bitterly. Next time she's going to insist Andrew springs for a Chinook or a Blackhawk. She leans almost vertically against the rockface because there is no room to sit down and drinks lukewarm greasy chai, cooling down rapidly because the snow keeps falling in. The Sherpas do not untie the ropes for tea breaks.

#

Ten thousand footsteps and two shaking thigh muscles later, the gray afternoon darkens into night. Midsummer in the Himalayas reminds Buffy strongly of December in Cleveland, where she did a short stint guarding the Hellmouth. She huddles in the half-ruined stone buildings of Camp 2 and stares into the darkness, already half asleep. Is this the end of the world? Snow in June? She knew Spike and she failed, but maybe it's worse than she thought.

#

Spike has not been unpacked from his snug travel box. He could kick the lid off, no problem, but what for? Even for a vampire there's too little ambient light to see anything, he knows by the smell it's snowing, nothing to eat here, and Buffy is deeply asleep, buried in her sleeping bag. Her heart beats slowly, evenly. Nothing going on there.

#

When Buffy wakes up the next morning, she has aged fifty years in one night. Her back and thighs have turned to rock and she can't move. It's the result of the possession, it has to be. Now would be the time to airlift her out and transport her to the nearest old people's home. She imagines Aura visiting her shriveled little mother and tears of self-pity inch from the corners of her eyes.

One of the Sherpas brings her the evil-smelling hot morning drink. He doesn't look any differently at her than usual. His heart is stone, like her legs.

Buffy worms herself upright until she's vertical enough to sip the tea. Her hands look pretty young for an eighty-year old. After the tea has warmed her insides, ("keep your core temperature up by drinking hot liquids") she assesses her present age as possibly only fifty something. Her legs still aren't cooperating. Who knew that descending the Himalayas would defeat Slayer thighs?

The thighs in question quiver at every step, and they take an hour to warm and loosen up. Buffy is not taking Aura hiking this year, or ever. Slayers are made for fights, short sharp runs, and not for this long-distance slogging, she decides.

Halfway through the morning the snow changes to sleet, and in the afternoon turns into rain. At ten to four the clouds break for three whole minutes, and the short glimpse Buffy gets of the valleys ahead is a startling bright green. She turns back for a last look at the Black Mountain and sees it's forbidding face has turned a glittering Aspen travelogue white, glorious against the patch of blue sky and grey clouds rushing in to fill the gap.

#

Spike wakes up when he feels the swaying of his coffin stop, and he's lowered down almost gently. He estimates they're at five or six thousand feet now. It will still be freezing at night, but for now, the air is almost mild. Tomorrow they'll descend into the warmer valleys, and Buffy and the Sherpas will eat something else than their own cooking. He'll still be confined to his coffin, of course. The trucks will be waiting at the end of that day, and he'll finally get to stretch his limbs.

The air is moister than he remembers it being for a long time, and he hears a gentle lapping. A stream? He doesn't think there were streams, on the way up.

Buffy is approaching. He lays back and closes his eyes, dark though it is, to savor her scent.

A soft tap on his coffin.

"You okay in there, Spike?"

How things change! When they were going up, Buffy never spoke to him when he was inside his six by two box, as if he was invisible. She sees him now.

He taps back. "For a coffin, this is pretty comfy."

"Wanna come out for a bit?"

How thoughtful. And it takes the Sherpas half an hour to nail him back in, but Buffy can probably do it in two minutes. Yes, he'd like to.

"Wouldn't mind a bit, love."

He waits while she rips off the coffin lid. He could easily kick it off himself, he's not a prisoner, but it's better when Buffy does it. She holds out her hand and its warmth shocks through him like when you touch a car door and you're on rubber soles. It's a lot less easy to clamp down on your feelings when you're not safely isolated in a coffin, with all the time in the world to think things through.

Buffy is silhouetted against the graying evening sky, short and lumpy in her thermal duds, but she's not wearing her cap. It is warmer this low, and the air feels thick and sweet when he inhales some so he can speak.

"Coming?" she says impatiently.

Right. He forgot to move.

When he's clambered out of his narrow playpen he freezes in surprise. The sloping valley of Camp 2 is unrecognizable. Instead of the sea of dusty grey rock he remembers, a shallow lake laps a pebbled beach close to the cabins.

Buffy follows his gaze. "I was thinking Amnesia Buffy when I saw this. The Sherpas act as if this is normal."

Spike shrugs. "Not that strange, what with all the rain and snow we've been having."

"What's up with that?" Buffy asks tensely and steps closer to him. "Apocalypse? Did we destroy the weather when the demons were using us?"

"Demons?" Spike says. "Andrew set us up, love. I'm thinking we were ridden by gods. And unless he's been undercover evil for the past thirteen years, it must have been for a good purpose."

Buffy says nothing. She bends over, picks up a rock as big as his head and hurls it two hundred yards over the lake. It breaks the surface of the water like a cannonball.

Spike lifts an eyebrow. "Anger management course?"

"Motherhood. There's nobody on earth can make you as mad as your own beloved offspring."

She takes a few deep breaths and cracks her neck. Self-control and thinking deeply are a pretty varnish over the old Buffy, but secretly he's stirred the original layer of unfettered feelings. She used him to take the edge of her frustration, and it wasn't all bad.

"Okay, let's park these thoughts until we know what we're talking about. Andrew, be afraid. Be very afraid."

Spike's sure Andrew made the decision he had to make. Meaning the Slayer and him were the best choice for the job. He has no idea what this says about the state of humanity's safety, but there it is. He hadn't counted on feeling like this again, but maybe Andrew has. Alright, he'll admit he's as angry as Buffy is.

Buffy's voice sounds much closer than he expected it to and his thigh muscles twitch in a mindless urge to jump away.

"So, we're not speculating about the cause anymore, but we can talk about how that night made us feel. I'm happy about it, Spike. Finding you again."

Spike jerks his head back as if he's been slapped. This is hitting below the belt.

"Buffy. This isn't real. We're marooned in strange country, with no one to talk to but each other. We've been thrown together. Doesn't mean this is going to hold together once we're back in London. Let's wait until we're home safe, okay?"

She grabs his T-shirt and yanks their heads close. "I can't' believe I'm hearing this from you, Spike. Where's the man who followed his heart? Who trusted it to tell him where to go?"

"That man is gone, Buffy. Remember what he used to do with those gut-feelings? Kill whoever he liked? I changed, Buffy. For the good."

"I don't believe that! You, cautious, making rational decisions? You're just afraid!"

No, she'd finally gotten him angry.

"Afraid? Well, Buffy, maybe I have reason to be afraid. I got burned pretty badly, remember."

"Now let me be Spock for a second," she says between clenched teeth, her nose less than an inch away from his. "One - you're happy that you are a changed man. Fine. But remember who caused you to change? That is two. Maybe you did get burned. Maybe I wasn't treating your widdle heart so well, but if that hadn't happened, you wouldn't be the Spike you are now. You can't have it both ways."

Spike grabs her shoulders, harder than he's been able to grab a woman in years.

"Yes I can. This is how I feel, and nobody, not even you is going to tell me otherwise."

Her lips mash into his and it's the perfect accompaniment to his anger. Spike crushes her slight body against his and pours all his pent-up longings into the kiss. He gaps like a fish when Buffy breaks loose.

"Don't lecture me about caution and true feelings, Spike. I spit on caution and common sense. And you be grateful that I'm not going to press my advantage. I'll give you time to think this over. Good night."


	6. Chapter 6

_Good night?_

"I think not, love," Spike says, a growl in his voice.

She wants the Spike who followed his heart and his dick, caution flapping in the wind. She can have him. He tackles her from behind and the air leaves her lungs with a surprised oof.

"You want the old Spike? Here he is! See how you like him now!"

He expected a retreat, blushes, anger, anything but the grin that plays around her lips. She attacks him right back. She rips his singed Helly Hansen jacket off him and starts peeling the rest of his clothes off as easily as the shell from a hard-boiled egg. Spike's a bit shaken but he grimly decides to give as good as he gets and digs into her layers. Buffy's trying to get at his pants but it's all or nothing now. He wants her naked and splayed out on the ground so he can see her properly. No more furtive shameful sex, no more gods making his decisions for him. This is him, now, taking her, and if she changes her mind she's going to have to be very clear about it, because so far he's taking the grunting and panting for a great big resounding yes please Spike ravage me right now.

Jesus, this used to be easier, when there were just a pair of jeans and flimsy thongs in the way. That thermal underwear doesn't tear easily and he has to slide off her countless garments one by one. Reminds him a bit of earlier times, when it was layers of skirts.

The sight and smell of her pale thighs dizzies him and he tries to plunge in straightway, but Buffy stops him with a foot on his shoulder.

"Socks off, buddy," she says in her most threatening Slayer voice, and he obeys, cock twitching happily.

Although he can see quite well in the cloudy summer night, his trembling fingers wrestle with the black socks for what seems like minutes. He plants his knees between Buffy's legs and presents his purpling cock to her. It's throbbing faintly, so that's how he knows he's not turning into stone from pure lust, but its thicker than he's felt it in years, so heavy that its weight is pulling him forwards, into her.

"You sure, love?"

Buffy twists out from under him and he collapses on the moist earth, he knew it, he knew it, but she turns him over and sits on him with a quick wiggle of her hips. He cries out because he needs to be inside her, but she bends over his face and gives him a sweet kiss on the mouth.

"We forgot the foreplay."

"Fuck the foreplay. We had four weeks of foreplay," he says, his voice thick. "Fuck me, Buffy, fuck me now and do it hard."

No more waiting. When he thrusts himself inside her, sure of her readiness because the scent of her arousal is honey-thick in the air, a great shout leaves his lungs. When his eyes clear, Buffy sways above him, snakes of hair escaping from her messy plait, her breasts fuller than he remembers.

There is no stopping him now.

"God, Buffy, love, love you so much, waited so long." All those words that have lain in waiting for years pounce at the opportunity to get out and crowd on his tongue. "Love you, Buffy, my Slayer, love your cunt, love your tits, want to touch you everywhere..."

Buffy's face radiates heat in the cool night, and brief glints of her eyes give him a thrill of fear, of everything being out in the open at last. She pants out a few words he can't understand, and he pulls her closer. "Talk to me, love."

"Can't talk," she pants. "Raincheck. Love you. Touch me, Spike. Make me come."

His fingers unerringly find the exact spot to press. Muscle memory. She dances on his cock, slick with lusty juice, and he feels his heart swelling until it bursts out of him in great spouts of feeling. It goes on and on, he's got such a store of them, having hoarded and hidden them like a miser until he didn't even know they were there, and the spending of all that salted-up stuff is like a birth, an enormous relief when finally the stopper gives with a pop like a champagne cork, a hundred champagne corks, rolls of thunder and a slash of lightning and it comes pouring out in great gusts of pent-up love. He sobs and moans and disintegrates in her arms until he's calm and empty, and, miraculously, still whole.

He must have cried, and Buffy too, because his face is wet and so is his hair, and he never knew he had that much seed in him, they're lying in a slippery sea of it. He wipes his messy hand on her right buttock and it's red, it's blood. Did he kill her?

"Buffy?"

She lifts a grime-streaked but smiling face off his chest. "Christ, Spike, did we make the earth move or not?"

Spike was too busy coming to notice, but now that she mentions it, he remembers feeling giddy and faintly nauseous with the force of his spending. The wetness is starting to make him feel cold and he finally gets that they're lying on mud, it's just raining. A thunderstorm in fact, rolling away to the east already, a few last flashes of lighting crackling out every now and then.

#

Buffy guesses Spike must have liked it. If the shaking and the eye rolling and the roaring like Godzilla on fire aren't clues enough, the lying flat on his back and the weak voice would be.

"Now what do you say," he says, striving for cranky but not quite making it through the shakiness. "How do you like the real, bad, crude Spike?"

Buffy giggles and slaps his sweaty chest. "You're my McDreamy, honey." She moves lower down. "And this is my McSpike." Spike's abs twitch fractionally, although she suspects the intention might have been to buck her off.

"For God's sake, Slayer, that show's been over for years. Don't tell me you watch pap like that."

"Aura and I watch the reruns, with popcorn and ice-cream. Aura wants to be a doctor, but she needs me to be there for the icky bits. And I like Dr. Shepard. The blue eyes, the curly hair. What's not to love?"

She nudges him. He doesn't budge. "Join us next time?"

That makes him crank open one bleary eye. Not that she can actually attest to its state, due to the bad lightning, but she supplies the bleariness from memory.

"You really think we're going to be an item when we get back?"

"Well, duh, of course I do." Buffy sits up and pins his arms with her hands. "And you better not weasel out again, mister, because you're so in trouble if you try."

#

Spike's breath hitches in his throat, with ribs that are painful from shouting so hard, until he remembers he doesn't need to breathe. Bloody hell, that was...pathetic. He must have lasted all of two minutes. The feeling of inadequacy would have had him babbling and making it up to her like a maniac before, but now it runs out of him, no more than half an inch deep. There'll be another chance to make her happy, in, say, five minutes or so, when he can move again. His McSpike is a McNoodle.

"Kind of sweet," Buffy says dreamily, kneading his noodle, cupping it gently into her hands. "Soft and cuddly."

Spike growls menacingly. He hopes. He flexes his trembling biceps. If he can get one finger to move, he has the means to shut her up. No, wait, he has his tongue.

"Come sit on my face, sweetheart. Gonna make you scream."

Buffy complies happily, and his face is enveloped by butter soft woman flesh, thighs, lips, everything swollen and tender and fragrant with her juice and his seed. The smears of red on her thighs are mud, and this inspires him enough that he can lift his hands to her breasts to adorn them with his palm prints. Better than Altamira, because her gently steaming, glowing, living flesh enlivens them. The sky helpfully illuminates his finger-painting with another forked flash of lightning, and the thunder swells on again, growing rapidly from soft growling almost below hearing to sharp cracks right above them.

#

"You wanna get inside?" he asks.

The sound of his voice against her neck sets of another small series of orgasms, shivering through her like Christmas crackers setting off. In their wake, an army of goosebumps marches in, nipples and other tenderly abused flesh contract painfully .

"Yeah, let's. What time is it, anyway?"

"Coupla hours before dawn. But you're cold, let's move."

Spike's arm around is her is so matter-of-fact, so self-evident that Buffy could almost cry. She's missed the physical side of Supportive Spike for so long.

Spike tucks her in tenderly, and when he starts zipping up Buffy clues in on the fact that he's not going to sleep beside her. She struggles to sit up in her down sleeping tube.

"Jeez, Spike, you're not gonna get inside that coffin on your own, Let me help you."

"Don't need your help, Slayer" is written on his forehead in big capitals and Buffy quells the actual words with her most forbidding look. Her forefinger is jabbing his breastbone again before she knows it. This is a bad habit, almost as bad as breaking his nose.

"You're gonna accept my help and you're gonna do it graciously," she bites out. "Don't be an asshole."

One corner of Spike's mouth lifts. "Bossy."

"Damn right I'm bossy. You need bossing around, because you tend to be Mr. Crankypants if I don't. Get in there."

Spike meekly lies down and she tacks down the coffin lid after sending him a last, threatening smile. The small bursts of violence needed to hammer the nails in are satisfying, but she's still worried as she stomps back to her sleeping place. The sex and the after-sex behavior are not matchy. Not like Spike, in fact, not like the Spike she used to know. But maybe he really has changed in every aspect. Or she has, and no longer triggers his gallantry. She thought they were settled for good, when the heavens groaned and the earth bucked, but as much as she hates admitting to it, she could have been wrong about it.

Damn, only one more day and they're gonna be back in the modern world. At least, there will be trucks, phones and running water, which are kind of basic but she's gonna appreciate them more than she's ever done.

#

The coffin judders down the mountain, strapped nonchalantly to the back of the truck. Spike vows to pack himself into Styrofoam the next time he has to travel like this, because the shifting and the hairpin curves are mashing his arms and his flanks into black and blue pulp with the incremental force of their impact, no matter that each individual thump is kind of small. It's worse than yesterday's swaying, yawing yak ride.

Still, this is so much better than the ascent four weeks ago. Then he was bored, now he's lulled into sleep and shaken awake in the rhythm of Buffy's heartbeat, which reverberates through his whole coffin because her hand has been lying companionably on the rough wood all day long. They can't talk directly because the truck's too noisy, but every now and then they converse over the phone. It makes him dizzy to think of those signals being relayed by God knows how many beacons and ground stations and satellite relays to his provider in London and the same route, or maybe traversing the other side of the globe, back to Buffy. In spite of all that, it's very intimate. Buffy tells him when she jumping off for a pee and when she goes to have chai with the drivers. Last night they squeezed themselves into two zipped-together sleeping tubes and that was even better than the mud-fuck-fest.

#

Buffy goes to sit with the driver for the last few miles. The town of Punakha has been visible for hours as they slowly zigzag down the slope, which is an intense inimical green. Roots thrust through the haphazard paving, tendrils and tentacles of urgent foliage rasp at the truck cover and crowd her when she pees or sits down to have coffee. Leaves in a hurry, trees on the march. When the sight of Punakha bursts through the canopy of crowns, she's absurdly relieved, as if the whole town could actually have been swallowed up by the marching Ents and their aggressive flocks.

When the truck finally lurches onto the parking lot of their hotel, the first thing Buffy notices is the aggressively clean bus on the premises. Cleanness spells the capital, and they don't get a lot of visitors from there.

And yes, there's a blond head bobbing on a thin body and sporting the usual second-Doctor scarf, undulating as if it's animated. Knowing Andrew, it might actually be a visitor from planet X. He's surrounded by a colorful retinue all manners of dress in the rainbow. She recognizes some of them, Andrew's cronies, sorcerers, councilors, watchers of all descriptions. What the hell are they doing here?

Suspicion rises to Buffy's throat like bile. This hasn't been an ordinary job from the beginning, and the welcoming committee makes that even plainer. What have she and Spike done for Andrew that they rate this triumphal parade? She needs to talk tactics with Spike. Andrew needs to be fed humble pie. She should have killed him when she had the chance, dammit. She jumps out of the cab and starts toward the back. A sharp pain shoots through her lower back. Jeez, she's still cramping from the descent. Andrew should have sent a younger Slayer. But then, how would he have provided a matching vampire, huh? Spike's unique.

So is she. The survival rate in the second generation is way, way up, like all the way up to forty percent. So much better than zero, but still not the ideal career choice. She's the only one to have made it to thirty-three, ever. Vi is twenty-seven. Below Vi there's a whole cluster of girls she doesn't all know. She's buried the rest, Faith, Rona, everyone.

"Spike?"

"Where else would I be?"

"There's a whole posse of Council big boys waiting for us. Thoughts? Hints on tactics?"

An almost silence, just faint scratching sounds from inside the coffin.

"Lay back and enjoy, it, Slayer." His voice sounds resigned.

"What??" She slaps her hand flat on the coffin. "I didn't divorce the old Council for nothing. If they or Andrew set us up, I'm gonna make them pay."

She can't talk like this anymore. She shoves the coffin further back into the truck and yanks off the lid. Spike lays there, squeezed in, hands by his sides like a real corpse. The somber look from his eyes is not dead at all, thank God.

He sits up with a wince. "Got any blood on you, Buff? If I have to make nice to the boffins, I'd rather not do it on an empty stomach."

"Topic!"

Spike sighs and rolls his shoulders before he clambers out. "I know you don't trust Andrew, but I do. He sent us to save the world, we bloody well did. Only question is how, and since when are we concerned about that? There's hijinks, they send us in, we squash it in whatever way necessary. What's so different now?"

Hitting his nose would relieve so much tension, but she doesn't do that. It's not Spike she's mad at, it's the personalness of it.

"Spike. You gotta be on my side on this. He used our feelings. He bet on the fact that we still...He knew we'd do it. Have sex. If that's what it was."

"Was a sacred union, Buffy. You know it as well as I do."

He doesn't use the word marriage, she notices with surprising bitterness. How did Andrew know she had so much feeling left for him?

"Cut to the chase, Spike. Are you with me against Andrew or not?"

"I love you, Buffy. Doesn't mean I have to agree with you."

"Yes it does!" she shouts, and wishes he'd get mad at her, and they'd wrangle, and in the end he'd do what she wants him to.

But this incarnation of Spike isn't like that anymore. He stares back, regretfully, but not budging an inch. Buffy wavers, knowing from experience what kind of relationship fight this is, knowing she should be gracious about it, but she's unable to shake off the shimmering cloud of anger. No, disappointment. If someone loves you they should stand by you, shouldn't they?

"Last chance," she bites out, trying to keep the thickness out of her voice.

Spike stretches out a hand, but Buffy walks past it and tumbles blindly out of the car. Why doesn't he acknowledge her feelings? They've been betrayed, used. Why doesn't his blood rise against that like hers? It's like Giles and the Cruciamentum. Andrew could have told her. Should have.


	7. Chapter 7

Spike upends the coffin to sit down on and think, but no amount of patting his pockets produces the fags that ought to be there. He finally looks down, annoyed at his hands for not finding what they're told to, and registers the scorched cold-weather gear he's wearing instead of his duster. Bugger. His last fag went weeks ago. Why is Buffy taking this so personally? And why did he have to be so bloody stiff-necked in his decision to be not angry about it? Wouldn't have killed him to bend a little.

The sun is taking its bloody time about setting, too. Bugger bugger bugger. A snaky thing looks around the corner of the truck's stained canvas canopy.

"Don't be shy, mate. Only gonna tear your head off, is all."

"Spike," Andrew says and seats himself on the edge of the truck's tailgate.

"You handled that badly, mate," Spike says. "Pissed off the Slayer no end."

Andrew uses his whole body to indicate he knew about it. His neck shoots forward like a chicken about to attack a worm, his mouth grimaces and his hands waggle. "I know. Executive decision. This was an extremely delicate procedure, and we decided you guys would play your roles better if you didn't know. Maybe you could have handled knowing, but I didn't want to put you in that position with Buffy."

Spike thinks of replying, but it would be pointless. The little wanker's done what he's done, no point in giving him a bollocking, although God knows someone should have when he was growing up. Now he's warded up the wazoo, and his familiar Snood has a nasty bite. The living scarf hisses at him. Spike vamps out and hisses back.

"You two have such a rapport," Andrew muses. "Sometimes I'm downright jealous of that."

Spike shrugs, not ready to be appeased yet. Besides, he loathes the striped monster. Now if it had Man U colors...

"Right," he says. "Thing's been done. Better tell me exactly what we did."

Andrew's face lights up. "It is so cool! We've been planning this for years, after I twigged to the reason the world is fucking itself up."

Spike keeps mum, waiting the rant out. Andrew will eventually support each and every questionable statement.

"The reason that humanity seems unable to fight pollution, extreme weather, over-population, extinction of species, is that we're reneging on our deals."

"What deals?"

"The sacred pacts between us and the gods. You know what I mean? They give us a leg up, we sacrifice goats and bulls, use their names a lot, sing their praises, you know the kind of thing. Back when demons ran the earth, this place wasn't so pretty and green, you know. So some of those demons made us, called themselves gods and that's how they won the battle against the other demons. You knew that, right?"

"A version of it," Spike says, skeptical, although he knows Andrew's hasn't been wrong for years.

"So, me and the guys, you know, Rastvanantha, Obuweyo, Dos Feliz, you met some of 'em, we got together and figured it out. The spell cloud protecting the earth is worse off than the ozone layer, and the analogy is not for nothing. It's as fragile as a spider's web, and we've walked through it a couple of gazillion times too many. There was no way we could patch it up. So we negotiated the start of a whole new deal. A representative of humanity, a representative of demon kind, to unite in a sacred marriage at Midsummer's eve, like it's always been done, or at the very least acted out. Savvy?"

Spike really needs a fag now. Andrew's limp scarf stiffens, flexes and dives its flat little head into Andrew's pocket. It comes out with a packet of smokes in its teeth. Great, cigarettes with holes in them. That'll work so well with the smoking. But he grins and accepts them. It's the thought that counts.

"Ta, Andy, and you too, em, thing."

They're insane, All of them. He can hear them buzzing behind the truck, giddy with victory. He braces himself for more bad news. Andrew's not ready yet.

"So, you know, we were monitoring the state of the magic deal, the sacred deal, and we knew you and Buffy had done it. It." He giggles nervously, and Spike guesses from Snood's grimace he's vamping out again. Oops.

"And in fact global weather has been getting back to normal, which is to say, say normal for 300 B.C."

"Why that date?"

"Religion, baby. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, and then the big destroyers, Christianity and Islam. Taking all that lovely attention away from the old gods, and since they bound up their power in those deals, lots of 'em died. We had to find new guys to woo, you know. Not easy. They don't much like humanity."

Andrew jumps off the truck and rubs his hands. He's finished with the conversation, apparently. Spike should probably be flattered he's been singled out as the first target of the sales talk.

"Did you check out the Black Mountain?" Andrew says and point. "Nicely covered in snow, instead of bare and ugly. Vegetation is doing good, too. CO2 in the air down a percent already. My guy in Malta says he'll be growing me a dodo steak in a few years."

"Yeah, great, weather is nice. Tell me more about the deal you made. On behalf of all humanity? Fucking hubris, mate!"

Andrew backs off a step. "Just, you know, the pact's got to be confirmed again. Definitely at Midsummer and Midwinter, but preferably daily. But I figured you and Buffy would be totally up for that."

He scuttles off into the sunlight, with his living stole making ugly faces at Spike behind his back.

Tosser. Buffy's never ever going to forgive this.

#

"Baffy!" someone cries out, and Buffy vaguely remembers him from London, but she sure as heck knows he's not supposed to hug her this tight.

"Amazing. Incredible. Only you could have performed this well! Extraordinary!"

His wizened pale-brown hand pats her midriff. "Any sign yet?"

Buffy's jaw is still busy dropping when he gives way to a bevy of other well-wishers. "Mz. Summer! Splendid job!" "Congratuliere!" "Hachoo, mees Sammer!"

And so on and so forth.

Buffy's smiling muscles are starting to ache and the only thing holding in the head of steam building up behind her eyes is her teeth, clenched grimly together below bared lips. What the fuck are they talking about? Sure, she's saved the world before, and people were happy, okay, so far so good. But this level of felicitations? Coming all the way to the back of beyond that is Bhutan for run-of-the-mill world-savage? She tries to find Andrew but fails.

"Your figure, she is the most glorious, fertile, maternal in the world! I will commission a statue to eternalize the gorgeous swell of she your belly..."

He's lucky he doesn't get an elbow in the schlamozzle. Her year with the Immortal has made her seriously adept at avoiding male 'admiration' and she skates backwards out of the crowd while still engaging in smiles and chitchat on the front. Andrew. Now.

There he is, hopping out of Spike's truck, stupid scarf trailing behind him.

"Andrew, yoohoo!" Buffy grits out between her teeth and Andrew turns back to her.

His face is pale, and he folds his arms, but he stands his ground. Buffy can almost admire him for it.

"Splainy. Or there will be hurty."

Andrew attacks right back. He hugs her tight to his parka and busses her cheeks. He's smoothly shaven, fragrant, straight from the Jumolhari in Thimphu, Buffy bets. He wears Clinique's 'Simply', which is so not a male fragrance.

"Buffy, this couldn't have happened without you. Only you and Spike could have withstood those powerful forces riding you, and I don't need to tell you that the fate of the world was hanging on this. But you guys came through. Incredible job!"

Buffy walks slowly in the direction of the gleaming yellow bus the Watchers and wizards came on. Andrew is forced to walk along with her. The moment they're out of sight she yanks Andrew close to her face.

"I could kill you right here and now. Give me a reason why I shouldn't?"

"But Buffy, you saved the world. You've always acted for the greater good. What's so different now?" the little worm says.

"You used me. You used me and Spike. You bet the fate of the world on whether we'd still have feelings for each other? Are you insane? What are the odds?"

"Please, Buffy, I'm Spike's friend. You think I wouldn't know that he's never stopped loving you?"

Buffy's aggression drains out through the wet earth, and she suddenly feels her aching butt, her furry teeth and greasy hair. She's not prepared for the anger to go that easily and stands, flailing, at a loss as to what to say to Andrew. Why bother? He's not going to understand her world view. He's been lucky, just plain lucky, and he thinks he saved the world because he moved Spike and her into place like chess pieces.

She's not going to let him go that easily. "You're a despicable human being. Your self-esteem is so inflated you can't look past the bloated balloon of pride floating in front of your face. What are you going to do now? Have a party with your buddies? All these men, huh, why are they always men, I wonder, trading people's lives for the good of the world? I spit on you! I'm never going to work for you again! And neither is Spike!"

Shit, she shouldn't have said that last one. In fact she should have swallowed the whole rant, because Andrew is just like Aura, he can sense she's no longer truly angry, just pretending to be for the sake of appearances. Her words slither off him like grease in a Teflon pan. And she so wishes he would stop fiddling with that stupid scarf, because it's distracting her. Maybe she can still find her righteous anger, but really she just wants a bath and a lot of hot greasy American food. Andrew bends his head close to her ear. "Hot wings? Burgers? Coke?"

Buffy stiffens, saliva floods her mouth. The man is making her drool on command? He's so dead.

"I told the hotel manager to stand by with a hot bath. You slide in and I'll have his daughter bring in all that hot yummy greasy salty American food and I'll top it up with Ben & Jerry's. Well?"

"That's blackmail," Buffy says weakly.

"Buffy, you're a gorgeous woman, but you're not looking your best right now. You do want to, don't you? Look radiant for Spike?"

If she were a real hero, she'd spit his bath and his ice cream in the face, but her willpower's a ninety-pound weakling and caves. It needs to build up its will-muscles and later go on to become Governor of California.

"Bath oil?" she moans. "Shampoo?"

"Cream rinse, and she could even touch up your roots if you want to....She's a trained manicurist...."

Buffy's hand creeps to her parting and then she hides her hands in her pockets. "I accept your offer of bath, manicure and food. For the rest, I still hate you and I will talk to you later."

Oh yes, she'll talk to him later. But after she's been fortified with all that civilization has to offer a smelly tired, hungry woman, whose pelvis and back ache from riding donkeys and trucks for days.

#

As soon as the sun sets, Spike slips into the festive crowd. Andrew has organized a celebratory barbecue, Bhutan style, which mostly means roasted tofu and peppers, and no one sees him as he slips through the crowd, sneaky as a predator can be among his natural prey. He can still remember wishing to be that predator again, and humans are his natural prey, but the memory of that wish is as faded as a century-old Daguerreotype.

He should have asked Andrew a lot more questions. Such as, exactly what kinds of demons were now humanity's new gods? And what else does humankind have to do to keep their side of the deal? He bets there're gonna be virgins involved, and blood sacrifices, possibly goats. And how come he didn't know demons had the power to turn back global warming? He's a demon, and he never knew that.

Spike doesn't find Buffy in the throng. He'd tried to follow her argument with Andrew through the medium of her heartbeat and their voices, but she went too far from the truck, too many people interfering with their loud bodies and sloshing blood. Deliberate, on Buffy's side. Hope she hasn't emasculated poor Andrew. Although he deserves her anger.

Spike gets new, worried thoughts about Buffy and he needs to check on whether she's okay. In the lobby cum dining room cum almost everything, he gives the clerk a note for her so he can see in which slot it's placed. He goes up and listens at Buffy's door. Her heartbeat is a little bit too fast for someone leisurely enjoying the bath he smells.

He quietly forces the door and pads towards the bathroom. The small table is strewn with the remnants of a junk food fest. Buffy' sitting straight up in the bath, eyes staring away into nothing.

"Buff? You okay?"

"No," Buffy says and grimaces. "I think I ate too much ice cream."

"Best stick a finger in your throat.," Spike advises as he settles himself on the bath rim.

She rolls her eyes.

"Lie back. Let me try something."

Buffy lies back without a word. Maybe she remembers how good he was with sprains and headaches. He wets a cloth and puts it on her forehead. Then he picks up her limp left hand and starts massaging, finger by finger, then the palm, then thick pads of her thumb. Something's different, he thinks but then he notices it's only that her hand is smooth and her nails are pink and glossy. She managed to get a manicure in, here, which is maybe not back of beyond, but certainly the suburbs to the back of beyond. Kudos.

"Better?"

"Yeah."

"Gonna be home in a couple days."

"Yeah."

"Where did you stash Andrew's body? Cupboard?"

Buffy groans low in her throat. Too relaxed to tense her facial muscles in a smile, he guesses. "He lives. I wasn't a hundred percent sure he was an evil idiot. Innocent until, you know the drill."

She yawns widely.

Spike gives up all thoughts of talking it out and helps her get into bed instead. She insists on brushing her teeth and stumbling over to the tap to spit and rinse. She's out the minute she hits the mattress. Spike thinks of joining her there, but resigns himself to a few more nights in the coffin. Truck to Thimphu, plane to Delhi and then to London. If he gets into bed with her now, the last leg of the journey in the cargo hold of the plane will be the harder for it. They'll have plenty of time to talk after. He wonders what Buffy's daughter is going to make of him.

#

The trip by third-world bus to Thimphu, the plane-rides to Delhi and London are uneventful. Spike's absence is marked. Buffy wonders about it while she shuts out the incessant chatter of her seatmates and keeps them at bay by automatic smiles. Does he always travel pretending to be luggage, or is he avoiding her? Andrew certainly is, and tries to camouflage the fact by sending her his whole posse of starched Watchers and creased, unwashed wizards to talk to her, one at a time.

Watching the in-flight movie, starring at the unbearably cute ten-year old Pitt Jr., would be preferable to the endless looks at her midriff, the eyes of all hues searching for a sign of something in her face, the blatant but unspoken hope. Buffy keeps her anger at bay by daydreaming in full bloody glory of dismembering, garroting, beheading, eviscerating or just plain bashing Andrew to death. She doesn't want to alarm Dawn unduly by calling her in the middle of the night, and she doesn't want to text her or e-mail her. Paranoid, maybe, but she feels it's important to be cautious. She's not gonna make a scene on the plane, but by God is she going to make one after she's gotten some proper sleep in her own bed and at least five showers, a manicure, a pedicure and a hair-treatment. And spent a lot of Aura-hugging time.

She's not an idiot, some passive vessel for a future of indemnity to the forces of darkness, like the creepy Andrew posse has dreamt up. How revealing it is that there are no women in the group, while the council normally consists of an ample majority of mature slayers and witches. They'd never stand for it. How male, to think you could solve all the woes of the world with one shady deal. She just knows who'll be mopping up the fallout of this for the rest of her life.

Buffy wakes up with a shock in the midst of landing on Heathrow. Home! Nearly home! She's texted Dawn her ETA and she can't wait to hold Aura in her arms after all this time. The place next to her is empty. Good. She can only hope that the creepy cabal hasn't been laying hands on her while she was asleep, sucking away her mana and her luck like bloodless vampires.

Her minds goes into overdrive, energized by the prospect of being almost home and safe. She'll mobilize Willow and Dawn to find out what exactly Andrew has been up to. Maybe Giles will even come out of retirement for something of this magnitude. She'll show them what a Slayer is capable of given the right kind of motivation. And she thinks she remembering a Boots drug store in Heathrow, before check out. She needs a little something tested urgently. She's not going to think beyond that, but oh, the butt she'll kick if it's true.

Landing and disembarking takes forever. Passport control, Non UK- or EU-residents. The bedraggled group of mighty warlocks waits meekly for their luggage to arrive. Andrew is busy negotiating. Spike's coffin, Buffy hopes. Yes. There it comes, on a special cart with a British flag draped over it. Andrew signs multiple papers while the baggage band turns around and around with the same three pieces of orphaned luggage on it.

Finally, the officials leave Andrew in possession of the coffin.

"Buffy, a hand?"

Buffy gives Andrew a big show of how easy she can open a sturdy coffin, dark oak, luxury class. She cracks the lid.

"Oops. Sorry, sometimes I don't know my own strength."

Andrew titters nervously and his scarf hisses at her. No, that can't be true. Spike hops out.

"Lo, love. Survived the trip? Had a nice kip, myself. Let's get cracking, eh? Sunup's in an hour."

In a daze, Buffy follows Spike, who finds his and her luggage within seconds.

"Coming with me, love?"

"Um, no, I have to wait for Aura and Dawn, they said they'd meet me. Wait for me?"

"Mommy!" A piercing shriek sends Buffy's heartbeat skyrocketing.

Aura. She forgets about Spike and runs towards the little dark-haired girl in the red hoodie and jeans. She gathers her up and vacuums in great big lungfuls of Aura-smell, kissing the little grubby face until Aura starts squirming.

"Mommy, stop. You're making my face wet. Gross."

Buffy laughs and Dawn takes the chance to hug her sister.

"Am I glad to be back!" Buffy says. "I missed you so much, Aura baby. Did you miss me?"

Aura glances at Dawn and nods virtuously. "I had vegetables every day. And Dawn reads two stories before bedtime. Can I have ice cream? I'm hungry."

Dawn rolls her eyes. "It's four o'clock at night, pigeon. How can you be hungry! Aren't you sleepy?"

"I'm like Mommy, I can stay awake all night if I want to."

"Let's go home, Buffy, okay? This is not my best time of day," Dawn says with a yawn.

Buffy nods, but then she remembers Spike.

"Spike?"

He's gone.

Oh for God's sake, did she hurt his feelings or something? It's pretty normal for a mother to forget everything the moment she sees her kid, right, and forgets to acknowledge the maybe-boyfriend? If that's how it's gonna be, all easily-hurt-ness and insecurity, maybe it's best that they don't continue whatever this is. Men.


	8. Chapter 8

Dawn once again proves herself the perfect sister. They hardly get home and carry Aura to bed when she starts yawning and announces she wants nothing more than to go home and sleep in her own bed. Buffy hugs her in abject gratitude.

"You knew I was longing have the house to myself, didn't you?"

"I know my big sister. You want to do your Mommy rituals and your Buffy home alone rituals in piece. Go on, enjoy them, and you can tell me all about you adventures later."

Adventures! The Bhutan memories shoot back into slot number 1 with a painful clang. "Yes. I really do have to tell you about them. And ask you stuff. How does tomorrow sound? "

"Whoa. It must be important. I figured you'd be hibernating for at least a week."

"In summer? Please, I'll be in the pool all day buying my daughter ice cream and throwing her inflatable balls. No hibernating for me."

"Metaphorical hibernating. You know-"

"Evidence to the contrary, I do know what metaphorical is," Buffy says with dignity. "I simply don't choose to use that word a lot."

"Absolutely. Saturday, your place, four-ish?"

"I'm probably gonna ask Willow to come along, too. Kinda big."

"Really?"

"Really."

Buffy sees more questions playing over Dawn's face, but Dawn's sticking to her perfect-sister mode and stuffs them.

Once the door shuts behind her, Buffy sags against the wall of her own hall and sniffs up the fragrance of home and it's the best thing she's ever smelled. Oh God, she's a homebody. She's a thirty-three years old single mom homebody who's been dreaming of her own bed for weeks. Pathetic. She drags her suitcase to the laundry room and upends it. Is she actually going too wash her disgusting travel clothes right now? Yes, she is. She is that woman now. Organized, decisive, the perfect homemaker. She strips off her wrinkled, sweaty outfit and adds it to the pile. Is any of it even savable? She'd prefer not to wear that cold-weather gear ever again, but Andrew did suggests in his inimitable, subtle, yet totally crass way that they'd need to be repeating the sacred marriage thing every year?

A bolt of heat shoots up her spine and tears up her eyes. Oh. She's so totally jetlagged that although it's six in the morning she doesn't feel sleepy at all and her mind cartwheels into acrobatic fantasies of Spike. Why has he been avoiding her? How long should she wait before calling him, and he hasn't even given her his phone number or address. The jerk. Walking off like that just because she had her attention on her daughter for a couple of minutes. Childish, petty, that's what it is.

If she knew his phone number, she'd send him an angry text or possibly beat him up in cyberspace.

Buffy changes her mind about washing her clothes right now. Garments revolving behind a glass door would only make her think of penises bursting form the sky and thunder crackling and Spike painting her breasts.

Instead, she decides on a long lukewarm bath while the morning is still cool. She looks in on Aura's sleeping form under the thin cover and breathes in the sweet smell that rises from her the down on her narrow little neck.

#

Buffy wakes up, shivering, in a cold bath. The expected heat of the English summer day hasn't arrived after all. The sky is gray and there is actual drizzling. Ew. Like the summers of old, the ones Giles used to mention, when living in England was different from California. Bad portents. She dries off hastily and goes to see if Aura's still sleeping. Nope.

She clatters down the stairs on cold feet and finds Aura contentedly stuffing her face with cornflakes. She's dressed in her usual pants and T.

"Mommy, can I play with Pierce? "

Piers is the vile little boy down the street, who's nose is perpetually running and whose ankles are always bare and black with grime. Aura loves him with a passion.

"Of course, baby. What are you going to play?"

"We're playing Arabs and Americans. I'm gonna be Rumsfeld and Piers is gonna be Saddam."

"Cool! Who's gonna win?"

Aura looks at Buffy with her big green eyes. "Mom! I am. I'm stronger than Piers."

"Good for you, honey."

"Mom?"

"What?"

"Can I be a boy?'

This is one of those difficult questions moms face. Aura's future probably depends on it. "Sure, sweetie, we can play that you're a boy."

Aura mashes the last cornflakes to a pulp. "I don't want to play, I want to be a real boy. Can I at least cut my hair?"

Aura's pretty hair? Buffy strokes it, the baby softness of it, brown, curly hair, very much like her own, she suspects, when she was younger.

"Cut it? But honey, it's so pretty. Don't you wanna be pretty?"

Aura sighs, slides down from her chair and sets her bowl in the sink. Dawn has taught her useful stuff, Buffy sees. And she gave the wrong answer. She's a bad mom.

"I don't care about pretty. I wanna be a boy. Will you call me Billy?"

"Of course I will, Billy. But don't you think girls have more fun?"

Billy curls her lips and tosses her hair. She'd have to unlearn that or the other boys would cal him sissy. Her. Whatever. "No way. Stupid dresses. Stupid hair. And they play with Barbies. I like my trains. Will you cut my hair now?"

A few minutes later, she scampers down the six stairs from the front door of the terrace house to go visit the beloved Piers. With short hair.

"Be back in time for lunch, Billy!" Buffy shouts after her and Aura gives a happy wiggle of her whole little body.

Aura's getting big. The highlight of her life used to be spending a day with her mother, but now she prefers to play with Piers. And often that is a relief, so Buffy can retrieve some of the pieces of her life that she gave up after Aura, but it's also a little bit sad. Little Aura's not coming back.

Although. Now that she has a moment of privacy, she should really do that test. Damn. She'd actually forgotten about it for a couple of hours. Buffy sits on the rim of the bath and stares at the narrow test tube.

#

Spike takes one last look at the sweet tableau of Buffy hugging her daughter and then quickly walks to the airport's underground exit. He's cutting it close. The tube's coming in as he enters the platform and he hops on. His luck has changed, he's going to make it after all. He changes trains at South Kensington and again at Victoria, where he takes the Northern Line to Pimlico, to his pleasant basement flat in the prim little street near the Tate. A miracle he can afford it, but the Council does pay well. Nowadays. Rupert was always a bit of a miser, but Andrew rewards Spike amply for his services. Which is, in essence, saving the world. Doing odd jobs of reconnaissance and assassination, sometimes even Indiana Jonesing old artifacts or manuscripts. A good life, a fulfilling life. Too bad he's gonna have to give up the flat.

He tosses his clothes on the floor of the bathroom and takes a nice hot shower. First, a letter telling his landlord he's giving up the flat. Taking a good look at his possessions. He'll bring the carpets, he decides, and the computer. The telly is a bit of an indulgence, a device that projects the screen onto his a whole wall. It's a bachelors' telly, innit, not like him and Buffy would be watching telly of an evening. They'd have better things to do. He decides not to sell it off yet.

Clothes. That's a whole different story. Most of his stuff has seen better days. Time for his once-yearly shopping spree, he guess. Or would Buffy prefer to go along? She might, he reckons. Buffy always did like her shopping. Many's the time he's trailed after her in a mall, when she had one eye out for prowling vampires and another on the dresses. They were generally beyond her reach, and it would make her more vicious and effective in killing demons. Magnificent.

Right. Give up flat, pack up books, what else does he need to do? Have a talk with Andrew about a change of job specs. Less jaunting about the globe, more close encounters of the British kind.

#

The bell rings. Buffy goes over to the door with a sigh. If it's Piers again, she's going to - Aura has beat her to it. She's probably also expecting Piers. Aura stands on tiptoe and manages to open the door. Up until now, Buffy had assumed that Aura couldn't reach the lock, so it takes her longer than she should to recognize who's standing there in the early evening drizzle.

"Spike!"

"Lo Buffy."

He waits.

Oh yes, he needs to be invited. And Aura takes care of it. Bad Buffy. She should have started Aura on vampire inviting etiquette sooner.

"Come in," Aura pipes. "Who are you? I'm Billy. I'm a boy."

"I can see that," Spike drawls and shoves an enormous duffel into the hallway. "I'm Spike. I'm a boy too."

Aura giggles and uses the opportunity to escape outside.

"Oh crap. Aura, come back."

"I'm just going to say goodnight to Piers!" Aura calls out without pausing.

Buffy grits her teeth. Shove Spike out of the way, snatch her screaming and kicking daughter from the pavement and drag her inside? Or be walked all over by her six-year old daughter? What would a proper parent do?

"Little tyke running off on you? Want me to get her back for you?" Spike asks, still politely waiting near the door.

Buffy sighs. "No, it's okay. If she's not back soon I'll go and drag her back from her boyfriend's house."

She takes in the XXL duffel. Why has he brought that? Is it a gift? Has he brought her like, ten-thousand hand-whittled stakes? How...thoughtful. Curiosity wins from politeness.

"What's in the bag?"

"Just some of my stuff." Spike shrugs and in one sinuous motion hefts the bags a few more feet into the house. "Where shall I put it? What's the plan for tonight? Grey's Anatomy? I think ITV has season 7 on rerun."

"It is. Did you come here just to watch TV?"

Buffy's rooted to her spot near the living room door. Spike takes another few steps closer.

"Was invited to do that, wasn't I? Needed a few days to put my stuff in order, cancel the lease on my flat, and here I am."

Lease on his flat. And that‘s his stuff in the bag. His clothes! He needs all his clothes to watch TV with her. She refuses to think beyond that.

"Are you moving in?" she blurts out and stumbles towards him. Her body is miles ahead of her brain, as usual.

"Thought we might as well," Spike starts and then his nose comes up like a hound's and takes a deep, disturbingly doggy sniff. Buffy's reminded of how gross she used to think that was. She still hates to see it. What does he think he's smelling? Oh.

"Buffy, what...how?"

Buffy covers the eighteen feet of hallway in three strides. "What do you mean, how? Were you there or were you not there when a giant penis from outer space took possession of you and used me? Huh?"

"It was a sacred marriage, Buffy, and yes I was there. Doesn't mean I realized it knocked you up."

"You knocked me up, mister, and don't you try and weasel out of that!"

Spike gestures mutely to his gigantic bulging duffel.

"Moving in, ain't I? Not skiving off."

Buffy yanks the lapels of his duster close and hisses in his ear, "And don't shout. The door's open and the whole street can hear you!"

Spike ignores the hissing and takes the opportunity to clasp her closely to his leather chest.

"Buffy."

Buffy struggles to be release. "Don't you Buffy me in that tone of voice! How do you think I feel! Your buddy Andrew knew exactly what he was doing and I hate you! I hate you!"

Spike doesn't give an inch. He lifts her up and slams her into the wall. The pressure of his hard body and harder cock against her aching pelvis don't make her anger disappear, but Buffy channels it into furious kissage and hair-mauling. She scrabbles at the soft leather of his old duster and digs her fingers into his arms.

"You think fucking me is going to make any difference to my feelings about what happened?"

"No, I don't. Still gonna do it," Spike says.

His hand is up her dress, and for a second she wishes she'd worn a newer pair and more attractive pair of panties, but when the elastic digs sharply into her thighs the moment before they tear, she's glad she didn't.

"Hold on," he growls.

Buffy braces herself between the wall and his body while he claws at his fly buttons. She tenses up in anticipation of his cock. It's gonna be so good. It's been days, she hasn't had time at all to look after herself, but it's more than just gratification, it's him she's been waiting for, not just any man-shaped missile.

Spike stops. He's not going to have to be goaded again? Once was fun, she's prepared to do it again but a third time would strain their budding relationship.

"What is it, lover?" she asks, trying hard to leave the incipient irritation out of her voice.

"We already did this," he says. "Gonna try something different."

Buffy's not sure how different she would find acceptable. Besides, is there anything they haven't done in their brief and violent affair in Sunnydale?

Spike is smiling widely down at her and she braces herself for a lewd proposal, but he scoops her closer to his chest and walks further into her house. Three more steps into her tiny hallway take him to her staircase and up he goes. Buffy floats in his arms, bemused, trying to be relaxed and not check up on her butt hanging out in the big mirror on the wall.

"Which one is it, love?"

Buffy points at her bedroom door silently. His question must be some kind of Victorian formality, because the trail of bright colored kid clothes and cuddly toys spilling out of the other door should be kind of a clue.

Oh God, she hasn't tidied up in there since her return from Bhutan and she's pretty sure she's forgotten to air it out this morning.

Spike stops a few feet form the bed and makes a pirouette with Buffy still in his arms. "Smells like heaven, love. Just like your pretty cunt."

What a good thing Aura's at Piers's. That's not a word she's comfortable hearing around her daughter.

Spike gently puts her down on the bed. "This is what I used to dream of. Your bedroom, with your girly bed in it."

Buffy swallows away her guilt. They're past that. There's no point in beating herself up about all the things she didn't want to do back then, they're just gonna do them and the past is over. "I'm glad we're here now," she says and stretches her arms behind her back.

Spike may be perfectly happy standing there just gazing at her on her own bed, but she wants him in there. Naked. She sits up and reaches for his pants.

"Come on, baby, out of these clothes. You're gonna give me jeans burns, and besides, I want to see you."

Spike reacts with gratifying speed and she waits for him, figuring he'd prefer to undress her tenderly and slowly. Of course he would. Sex in Bhutan must have resembled their rough tumbling a bit too much for comfort. This is gonna be slow and sweet. They have all the time in the world.

"Mommy?" Aura yells from downstairs.

#

Spike watches Buffy as she marches Aura through her bedtime ritual. With one hand, she directs Aura to the bathroom to brush her teeth, while her other hands picks up toys and bright clothes scattered all over the second story like shed blossoms from a clothes tree. While Aura brushes her tooth, singing along with the little song the brush plays halfway, Buffy straightens up the bathroom and starts a load of laundry. She seems to have more hands than Shiva and the learning curve for parents seem incredibly steep to Spike. But he will learn it, so he can be a proper dad to his future sprog.

Buffy sings a song to Aura and tiptoes out. Frog-shaped nightlight in the room, door on a crack.

Buffy's face, smooth and smiling while her attention was on Aura, snaps back into a frown as she brushes past him downstairs. Spike doesn't want to trot at her heels like a puppy, because that sure as hell would get him a snarl, but when the clanging and banging begins in the kitchen, he reckons staying away would be worse.

He keeps mum and tries to help her tidy the place. He brings her a dirty cup from the sitting room and stacks a week's worth of newspapers. He tries to curb his own rising irritation, but since Buffy's giving no sign of dissipating her cloud of crankiness, he quietly gets madder.

Why does it always have to be this way? He always has to surprise Buffy into showing love and affection, or at the least lust, because she never gives any of her own accord. No, that's not true. She was sweet and loving to him on the way down from the mountains. Yeah, but that was away from her friends and family. Now she's back on her own turf and she's getting cold feet. Or something.

He seethes in silence while Buffy cleans the kitchen with maniacal intensity. The front door is still open, where Aura didn't shut it behind her, and a tricycle's red skeleton lies abandoned on the steps. He bends down to retrieve it and hears a sharp inhalation on the other side of the scraggly hedge. His nostrils widen and he looks up. The figure of a man, indistinct in the dusk, turns on its heels and lopes off. No use. Spike's nose has long identified him. If there's anything that can make him suspicious, it's secret visits to Buffy's house. And whatever Andrew was after, he left happy.

Finally, Buffy puts down the rag, shakes out her shoulders. She's gonna march past him and he'll be reduced to following her again. He absolutely loathes the stripe of tension between her brows.

She walks up to him and folds herself into his arms without the slightest change in her expression. Spike freezes in surprise. He's a prat. She loves him, she's said so, although not today. Of course, the sudden and unsolicited addition to her household gives rise to some tension. Not to mention that there's Aura and the whole unpleasant Andrew business.

"I wish we could go way, you and me," she murmurs into his neck. "Forget about Andrew and his icky plans, and just relax and make love."

Spike grunts assent and holds her tight. Of course, they would, and of course, it's not going to happen. They have responsibilities. Buffy's worry, and her knee jerk-reaction to anything that smacks of council-meddling won't go away.

"What do you want to do, love?" he asks.

"Let's just sit and watch TV for a bit," she says. "I'm all wound-up, and we can't go up to bed yet. Aura wakes up easily when she's just fallen asleep."

Spike sees he's going to have to keep track of potential shag-moments. No more spur-of-the-moment sex. Then she switches to the news, but Spike isn't paying attention. Her heartbeat is music enough for him, and the slow but sure ways her scent changes from sharp and agitated to sleepy and comfortable. He's doing that for her, making he feel safe. His hand strays to her belly. Not exactly a heartbeat there yet, not a heart, but something pulses and grows there, changing Buffy's scent, deepening it.

"You're looking so possessive," she says.

Spike starts guiltily. "Is that bad, then?"

She sighs. "Maybe. Are we sure you're the father?"

That's rich! "What other demons did you sleep with?" He didn't quite mean that the way it came out. "Sorry. I know you didn't." And he really does. Other blokes are not the big issue right now.

"I meant, which you would have known if you'd have let me finish, that God knows what fathered this little wriggler. We have to think over what we're giving birth to."

Does he care, now that she's said 'we'? Not in the slightest. But he understands that she would really prefer to give birth to something pink with ten toes and fingers.

"We'll go and have it checked out with all the trappings. Harley Street and everything," he says.

Buffy seems mollified. Time to mention Andrew.

"Listen up, Buff. Andrew was here, right on our doorstep, visiting you or checking up on me. And he went away again. He was satisfied, relieved even."

"And you're still not suspicious?"

There it is, the anger of the Slayer, no longer as quick off the mark as it used to be, but still a fine and roaring fire when it is.

"Definitely warming up to it now."

"I was suspicious the moment I found out what he pulled in Bhutan. And now he's checking up on my sex life? Does he think he owns me after that Midsummer night thing?"

"Sacred marriage," Spike reminds her.

"Yeah, okay, sacred marriage." But her eyes widen and her breast heave in indignation. "He does, doesn't he? Think he owns us? He thinks we should have sex. For what? Do you know anything more, Spike?"

Spike's heart is heavy with the knowledge that he will have to move against his friend now. Of course he's right behind Buffy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More or less the end...


End file.
